The First in 1000 Years

Posted April 22nd, 2013 by Jen in france/french, persecuted church, politics/world news, religion
3 Comments »

Imagine being the first person in your family tree in 1,000 years to do something radically different?

I was reading about Christian missions in France and read this story which completely arrested me:

Between the Children’s hour and the Ladies Bible study that Sherrylee was going to speak to, we had 30 minutes. Sherrylee had accidentally wandered into a neighbor’s house, thinking it was part of the church building. . . . ., but it turned out that this neighbor had been baptized a couple of years ago, so as Craig was explaining to the neighbor why Sherrylee had walked into his house, he invited us in for tea and cookies. Khered (?) is his name and he is Algerian. He and his wife want to return someday to Algeria, which could be a great opportunity to carry the Good News with him. He says he is the first Christian in his family in over one thousand years! Think about that!

Algeria, with a population of over 37 million, is the largest country in Africa, bordered in the north by the Mediterranean Sea. Today Islam is the official state religion and about 99% of the population follow Sunni Muslim.

What was happening for over a thousand years to prevent this first Christian’s ancestors from knowing Jesus? What wasn’t happening?! Algeria’s history is one of invasion after invasion: the Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, and then, the prolonged invasions of over 1,000 years of the Muslim armies from Cairo (642-1830) which set the course of the nation. More invasions followed, the Spanish, the Ottomans, the French. But that 1,000 year reign of Muslim expansion could not be undone.

But perhaps we are beginning to see the dawning of a new era. A French-Algerian who is the first in his family to be called Christian in a millennium? The gates of Hell shall not prevail.

Tags: Algeria, France, Marseille, Missions

The anti-Alpha and Omega

Posted January 26th, 2013 by Jen in family life, politics/world news
1 Comment »

Today in Washington, D.C., hundreds of thousands of pro-life advocates marched on Washington, D.C. to solemnly commemorate life and protest the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Since that ruling, 55 million babies have lost their lives to abortion.

I was thinking about how the Lord said, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.” It’s strange, isn’t it, how here in America these are the two points at which we fail most unspeakably — we desecrate and dishonor both the beginning and the end? In the beginning, we kill and abandon unwanted babies, and in the end, too, we kill and abandon the elderly in increasing numbers.

It’s known to anyone who has read the Bible, or simply experienced life, that whatever God holds dear, the enemy sets his sights on. Whatever power God possesses, Satan wants. Whatever is good and lovely, the enemy will purpose to steal, kill, and destroy it.

So of course, if the Lord has made holy and declared power over the beginning and the end, guess what? The anti-Alpha and Omega wastes no time.

Join me in prayer for the largest human rights issue of our day?

Tags: anti-abortion, March for Life, Pro-Life

Tradition!

Posted November 25th, 2012 by Jen in family life, politics/world news
4 Comments »

This just seems wrong. I’ll take a cold spill on real ice, thank you. And that thin spray of ice shavings you can kick up when you do a hockey-stop? I’d miss it.

And this? How will the children ever read the original U.S. Constitution? Or write a personal Thank You in flowing script for that special gift, signed with their unique signature? And what of those brain benefits and fine motor skills and the loss of an art?

I’m with Tevye:

A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask ‘Why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous?’ Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition!

The constant tension between tradition and progress will never end. I like tradition for the comfort of it, the meaning it brings to life, the connection to the past and to others. Progress, it’s a benefit, too, of course, and a matter of course, and sometimes better. I would just hope that as a culture and as a nation we don’t ditch tradition because it’s the trendy thing to do, or the politically correct way, or the cheaper way, or because we think we’re intellectually superior to the “artificial constructs” we call tradition.

And how do we keep our balance?

Tags: Fiddler on the Roof, tradition

The Moral Case for Free Enterprise

Posted October 10th, 2012 by Jen in politics/world news
1 Comment »

Don’t miss this powerful video about the American dream, why a free market is morally good, and why economic freedom will always mean personal freedom. The false narrative about “greedy” business people is not just a lie, it’s a manipulative grab for power.

Tags: American Enterprise Institute, entrepreneurs, Free enterprise, The Moral Paper Route

The Dead President Dream

Posted April 27th, 2012 by Jen in family life, politics/world news
1 Comment »

I had a dream last night that I was speaking to a dead president, actually I was practically wailing, begging for help for our nation’s predicaments. I specifically cried out to this specter of a president, white haired and stately, across the divide of time and space, about gross abuses of the First and Second Amendments by the current administration. The dead president? It might have been Jimmy Carter, as best as I can recall, but that would totally not make sense, but you know how dreams are. **Crazy** yes? I was hoping he could help.

I don’t actually recall all the details of the offenses I brought before the ghostly man, but some had to do with the imprisonment of many people for their exercise of “free speech” that was somehow against the ruling authority and their social ethics. The other particular I remember pleading about was that guns were being completely confiscated from all people. On my honor, I was not watching or listening to any conservative rhetoric just prior to this dream, it just happened. In fact, I feel asleep listening to a Pimsleur French audio CD.

I told my husband about the dream this morning and he mentioned this song, which I’d not heard before, called Mr. Lincoln by Hank Williams, Jr.

Mr. Lincoln

The theme, while just sort of related, weirdly goes well with my dream.

Mr. Lincoln I wish you were here.
The Republic’s changed a lot in a hundred years.
And I don’t think it’s working like you planned.
Oh, Mr Lincoln, we sure could use a hand.

Tags: dreams, Hank Williams Jr., Mr. Lincoln

The Staggering Relevance of Bonhoeffer

Posted February 4th, 2012 by Jen in features, germany, history, persecuted church, politics/world news, religion
9 Comments »

Bonhoeffer’s been dogging me for decades and sometimes I do wish he’d back off, because he’s always reminding me that anything of value has a high price. I’m a tight-wad, I don’t like to pay high prices.

Perhaps you’ve not been introduced to Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Today is his birthday, and 106 years ago he entered the world, along with his twin sister, Sabine, in Breslau, Germany, bringing great joy to Paula and Karl Bonhoeffer, and eventually there would be eight children who had the most lovely and nurturing family a child could hope for. Above the west entrance of Westminster Abbey in London are 10 modern martyrs – Bonhoeffer’s statue is among them. In the briefest of words, Bonhoeffer was a theologian, a pastor, a writer, a Christian, a prophet, an anti-Nazi spy. He was executed on April 9, 1945 in a German concentration camp for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler, just days before liberation of that camp.

But I’d like to talk about why we should be concerned about Bonhoeffer in the 21st century.

Eric Metaxas has recently written an award winning biography of Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. I liked it better than the massive volume by Eberhard Bethge simply for its readability and style. Metaxas explains why we should care about Bonhoeffer:

Bonhoeffer’s relevance to us today is staggering, and I confess that when I began writing the book I had no idea I would stumble over so many powerful parallels to our own situation. For one thing, the story of Bonhoeffer is a primer on the burning issue of what the limits of the state are.

Exactly why is he relevant to such a degree that people are still writing biographies about him and giving talks and holding congresses? Germany in the 1930s and 40s is challenging to comprehend — the Nazi and Jewish issues, of course, the role of the church, and I wonder how to extrapolate from those times without finding a Nazi behind every overreaching government act.

The state of Bonhoeffer’s world was that the German Christian church looked the other way as Jews were being carted off for “resettlement in the East.” In Bonhoeffer’s last great work, Ethics, though unfinished he considered it his magnum opus, he rebukes the church for her grave offenses against humanity and allowing herself to be subjugated by the Nazi regime:

The church must confess that she has not proclaimed often or clearly enough her message of the one God who has revealed Himself for all time in Jesus Christ and who will tolerate no other gods beside Himself. She must confess her timidity, her evasiveness, her dangerous concessions…She was silent when she should have cried out because the blood of the innocent was crying aloud to heaven…She has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims and has not found ways to hasten to their aid. She is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenseless brothers of the lord Jesus Christ…The church must confess that she has desired security, peace and quiet, possessions and honor…She has not borne witness to the truth of God…By her own silence she has rendered herself guilty of a failure to accept responsibility and to bravely defend a just cause. She has been unwilling to suffer for what she knows to be right. Thus the church is guilty of becoming a traitor to the Lordship of Christ. [Ethics, p.117]

Could this not have been written ten minutes ago, as Metaxes said in an interview?

What are today’s burning issues? I ask, as I seek to find Bonhoeffer’s relevance.

Abortion is one. I’m not comfortable addressing this contentious subject. Every person I know has been affected by this, either she has personally had an abortion or knows someone who has. And so who wants to go around telling a woman she is a negligent person, a selfish creature, a murderer? Not me.

I vaguely, then rather insistently, wondered if Bonhoeffer ever had an opinion on the topic of abortion or the right to life. I discovered in his book, Ethics, what I was looking for.

Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder. [Ethics, pp 175-6]

Bonhoeffer considered many facets of abortion, including the pastoral care that necessarily should be involved:

A great many motives may lead to an action of this kind; indeed in cases where it is an act of despair, performed in circumstances of extreme human or economic destitution and misery, the guilt may often lie rather with the community than with the individual. Precisely in this connection money may conceal many a wanton deed, while the poor man’s more reluctant lapse may far more easily be disclosed. All these considerations must no doubt have a quite decisive influence on our personal and pastoral attitude towards the person concerned, but they cannot in any way alter the fact of murder. [Ethics, p 176]

He further speaks to extreme cases:

…with regard to the killing of the fetus in cases where the mother is in danger of losing her life. If the child has its right to life from God, and is perhaps already capable of life, then the killing of the child, as an alternative to the presumed natural death of the mother, is surely a highly questionable action. The life of the mother is in the hand of God, but the life of the child is arbitrarily extinguished. The question whether the life of the mother or the life of the child is of greater value can hardly be a matter for a human decision. [Ethics, p 176 n. 12]

I’m amazed at the specific issues Bonhoeffer addresses with regard to abortion, and it all leaves me little room to wonder what Bonhoeffer would say today in the 21st century. As Eric Metaxas said, Bonhoeffer is staggeringly relevant. He further makes it clear that the right to life is not based on the qualities of the individual.

Life, created and preserved by God, possesses an inherent right, which is wholly independent of its social utility. The right to live is a matter of the essence and not of any values. In the sight of God there is no life that is not worth living. [Ethics, p. 163]

The distinction between life that is worth living and life that is not worth living must sooner or later destroy life itself. [Ethics, p. 164]

It would…be intolerably pharisaical if society were to treat the sick man as though he were a guilty man in order to put itself in the right at his expense. To kill the innocent would be, in the extreme sense, arbitrary. [Ethics, p. 165]

I read all this from Ethics just yesterday and my head fell into my hands and I wept. I almost didn’t want to know; silly, it’s not like Bonhoeffer’s opinion would change my mind, I had concluded when I was very young that abortion was an injustice. But have you ever experienced knowledge that suddenly unloads responsibility? It was this, and I wept, and I couldn’t even allow myself to grasp the entirety as I would have literally fallen to the ground from the weight of it.

I don’t want to become a radical, oh, at least not any more radical than I already am. It’s dangerous to be radical. It’s so much safer to be non-radical, at least on this side of Heaven. Bonhoeffer was a radical of sorts by all accounts, and he paid for it with his life, with a a piano wire around his neck as he dangled naked in the courtyard of the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp in Germany.

And yet he is my hero, and has been for two decades. Someone gave me The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer when I was in my early twenties, and that was my introduction to this compelling man. I read bits and pieces and the words just sat smoldering in the recesses of my mind for twenty years. I do gravitate to the edge of costliness, but to actually take the leap, like Bonhoeffer, is not fully in my nature.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. [Cost of Discipleship]

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God. [Cost of Discipleship]

So from the beginning of my life as a committed Christian, I’ve had in the background of my thinking, always, the cost of discipleship, which is of course clear in the teachings of Jesus, but made so visible to me by Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer was continually accused of being a single-issue fanatic in his time. And why? He vehemently opposed Nazi interference in the church and so was stripped of his pastoral license and forbidden to speak in public or print or publish. He then helped Jews escape to Switzerland which led to his first arrest. Don’t we look back from our vantage point and not see this as fanatical at all? We are not allowed the privilege of seeing our present from a future viewpoint, and that’s why I spend all this time with Bonhoeffer, searching and probing for relevance and truth to help myself, and maybe spare myself from death of conscience.

But I’ve come to realize there are rarely single-issue fanatics. There is a vast underpinning of philosophies and moralities that find expression in a single-issue, and start digging and you will find the true breadth of it all. Bonhoeffer’s extensive writings demonstrate this theory, and the complexity of what appears to be a single-issue begs to be examined.

Five years ago, on the anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s execution, I wrote an essay exploring Bonhoeffer’s call to the church, a call to action for times when the state is involved in illegitimate actions. I said I’d write more later. And here it is, it took me a while. I quote again from Bonhoeffer’s writings in Ethics, scathing words to the church in his day relating to the Jews, but equally applicable and significant for the unborn in our day:

She was silent when she should have cried out because the blood of the innocent was crying aloud to heaven…She has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims and has not found ways to hasten to their aid. She is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenseless brothers of the lord Jesus Christ. [Ethics]

Bonhoeffer, oh, could he have known that he would suffer to the last and to the fullest, with Christ and with the Jews and the undesirables? I do think he knew, and he intentionally chose the way of the cross.

If we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity… We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.

The Psalmist was lamenting that he was despised and rejected of men, and that is an essential quality of the suffering of the cross. But this notion has ceased to be intelligible to a Christianity which can no longer see any difference between an ordinary human life and life committed to Christ. The cross means sharing the suffering of Christ to the last and to the fullest. [Cost of Discipleship]

May I leave you with some resources for you to further examine the relevance of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to your world? Following are some links (which have been of immense help to me) to books, essays, videos, blogs, all of which either directly speak of Bonhoeffer, or involve current issues to which his principles could be applied.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas
National Prayer Breakfast, 2012, with Eric Metaxas (begin at 35 min. in)
Marco Rubio Pro-Life Speech at SBA event
Catholic Leaders Urge Parishioners to Denounce Mandate
Bonhoeffer Blog
Bonhoeffer Timeline
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Reading Room (links to all of Bonhoeffer’s works as well as books/writings about him)
God & Caesar by Dr. Laurence White
Bonhoeffer Blog Discussion Group @ Pebblechaser
Bonhoeffer Documentary
Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace – DVD
Hanged on a Twisted Cross – film

Technorati Tags: abortion, Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas, Ethics, Jewish question, Nazi Germany

Why Claire Berlinski is Awesome

Posted February 3rd, 2012 by Jen in politics/world news
0 Comments

While Claire tells me exactly what is going on in Syria at this moment in totally understandable and frank terms, FoxNews thinks that today’s best world news is that a school principal in Trinidad puts students’ heads in toilets. Truly, nothing about Syria on Fox’s main page as I write this. CNN does have a story on their main page, but I really don’t like CNN and they fail to mention possible outcomes, they title their story including the words “bold and exhilarating” which is sort of inappropriate for the situation, and they seem to think diplomats or the UN might be of some use here.

CNN says the U.N. Security Council is drafting a resolution to “put more pressure on Syria,” while Ms. Berlinski says:

Let me put this to you simply. Assad is a monster. He is evil beyond comprehension. No one is going to stop him until he and everyone around him is dead. But you’re out of your minds if you convince yourself the FSA is comprised of potentially friendly, liberal democrats. There’s not a liberal democrat between here and the Horn of Africa, just trust me on this; they don’t even know what those words mean, they just know that you have to say them if you want to have any hope of being saved by those weird but freakishly powerful Americans for whom the words “liberal democrats” are the magic elixer. There will be no friendly, moderate, secular regime in Syria, ever, and the first thing the FSA will do if anyone helps them is slaughter Alawites and Christians.

Ms. Berlinski does honest risk assessment and thinks of a plan–slim chances of anything working but at least she’s thinking.

The risk right now to Syria’s neighbors, if it tries to help, is extreme: Assad holds the PKK card, it has huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. The regime is going bankrupt, at the very least there will be floods of refuges if this continues, Turkey certainly can’t absorb them. The Russians would be perfectly happy for every man, woman and child in Syria to be tortured and killed so long as nothing gets between itand its warm water base at Tartus. The French and the British will make very stern noises, but what are they going to do. UN? Useless. Arab League? Useless. GCC? Useless.

Thanks, Claire. While I think she’s rather crazy and radical to choose of her own volition to live and write from Istanbul, isolate herself from friends and family, continually place herself in bodily danger, and insert her opinion at her peril on explosive Middle East politics, she’s pretty awesome.

Tags: Claire Berlinski, Syria

Thursday Threads

Posted November 17th, 2011 by Jen in family life, politics/world news
8 Comments »

Good Thursday to you! I’m too busy to write much or write well, but here are some threads catching my attention today.

1. The Iron Lady. This film is a biopic on Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of The United Kingdom from 1979 – 1990. Because Hollywood hates conservative women, I’m afraid this will be a hit job, but I await the release with huge anticipation. Her arrival at 10 Downing Street was historic, and I’d love to see a fair treatment of her complex personality and contribution to world affairs, but casting Meryl Streep as Thatcher is like casting Sean Penn as Reagan–you can’t get more politically polar. The jury is still out on whether Streep, an outstanding actress, will put aside her own contempt of conservative politics and do right by Maggie.

2. This fantastique French blogger is on her way to publishing a book in 21 days! Kristin Espinasse, my French connection and kindred spirit, is culling hundreds of blogs post to compile into a vignette of French life, to be self-published through Amazon’s CreateSpace. Go Kristin!! She had previously put out a traditional house-published book, also a collection of blog posts, and this new book will pick up where that one left off.

3. Today in history (November 17, 1558) marks the beginning of the Elizabethan Age! (Hello, Shakespeare). Queen Mary Tudor died, and Elizabeth I ascended the English throne. Also on this date in 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh went on trial for treason and today in 1796 Catherine the Great of Russia died. This day was also terrible for the tango: on November 17, 1913, Kaiser Wilhelm in Germany banned the armed forces from dancing the tango.

4. Thanks to give in Detroit.

5. Detroit also has a coffee angel.

6. The secret of contentment.

Random photos from my file (and wow, rearrage the letters of file and you have life!):

Have a thrilling Thursday, and wonderful weekend!

~Love Jen

Technorati Tags: Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister UK, The Iron Lady

It’s like going into a strip bar and being offended by nudity.

Posted October 27th, 2011 by Jen in persecuted church, politics/world news
2 Comments »

It’s a Catholic University, for God’s sake. Really, it’s for God’s sake. And Muslims who CHOOSE of their own free will to pay lots of money and attend this Catholic religious educational institution, are now complaining and filed a 60 page complaint with the D.C. Office of Human Rights against Catholic University in Washington, D.C. for violating their “human rights” by not providing them with special prayer rooms that are devoid of any Christian symbols such as the cross.

I would love to think this was a joke. Or at least that it was some mentally unbalanced fringe character who filed the lawsuit. But no (or maybe yes), it was an attorney and professor at George Washington University who filed the complaint. The Office of Human Rights expects the investigation to take as long as six months. It should take six seconds: it’s a private Catholic University, assimilate or go to a Muslim school or a government school. And then let’s talk about how you feel about a Christian church in Mecca.

It’s like going to the Louvre and filing a complaint that there is not a single room in the entire museum that is devoid of art. Or like going to La Scala and being offended that singing filled the entire opera house. Or like watching the World Series and being offended by the balls.

*my title comes from a comment on this article~thanks, Timothy in Georgia

D-Day in Color

Posted June 6th, 2011 by Jen in france/french, history, politics/world news
0 Comments

D-Day in color.

By the numbers:

160,000 Allied troops, supported by more than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft, landed along a 50-mile stretch of French coastline. While the Allies sustained major casualties–9,000 killed or wounded–more than 100,000 troops would go on to march across the Continent to defeat Hitler.

Their finest hour, as Churchill said on June 18, 1940.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

Remembering Normandy.

Tags: Allies, D-Day, France, Normandy, World War II

Happy Memorial Day

Posted May 30th, 2011 by Jen in holidays, politics/world news
0 Comments

I suppose the only thing that puts the “happy” in Happy Memorial Day is the remembering. The importance of remembering is huge. So huge that if we forget, all really is lost. Remembrance leads to action. It is an act of truth and honor.

Please pause from your BBQ, your boating, your biking or hiking and remember the fallen, the fighters, those who died in battle and those among us that are dead inside though they live.

This short trailer for the documentary Honor Flight to be released in November 2011 is a kind way to remember the fallen, as told by their comrades who now have little time left to tell.

In Flanders Fields

By John McCrae 1872-1918

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

1915

{photo: the shack at the end of my lane}

Technorati Tags: Memorial Day

Giving to Japan: Please consider my friends the Millards

Posted March 17th, 2011 by Jen in persecuted church, politics/world news, religion
4 Comments »

Do you wonder how to give responsibly and directly to the Japanese relief effort in the wake of the March 10, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster?

I remember after Katrina, Haiti, and other colossal calamities, there was much waste and fraud, and little accountability concerning the donations that were made.

So, I want to introduce you to friends of mine who have been serving as Christian missionaries in Japan for over 20 years.

Jim & Masako Millard of Sunrise International Ministries

They were sent out as missionaries from my home church in Eugene. Jim grew up in the Eugene area and met his future Japanese wife, Masako, while attending the University of Oregon. The rest is history, as they say.

My husband and I have been supporting them for at least a decade, and know without a doubt that monies given directly to their ministry is literally saving people as I write, as their family is busy with buying food and supplies in Tokyo and trucking them into Sendai province.

Sunrise International Ministries is a nonprofit Christian mission organization founded by Jim & Masako Millard. Jim and Masako have been serving in Japan for more than twenty years. Their sons Joey, Noah, and Davy, along with Joey’s wife, Ai, and Davy’s wife Yumiko, all work with them in Japan as missionary interns.

This website allows you to make debit or credit card donations on a one-time or recurring basis to Sunrise. These donations are tax-deductible and a tax receipt will be issued each January for the preceding year’s contributions. [info from the Sunrise website]

I’ve been receiving the Millards’ monthly newsletter for many years, and can attest to the incredible passion and often crippling perseverance this family has lived out on behalf of the Japanese people whom they love with all their hearts. I find it compelling that all of their children are serving the Lord, and with the exception of their daughter Anna who is currently attending the University of Oregon, their grown kids are also working as missionaries in Japan.

If you have the resources to give financially to Japanese relief or missions, please consider donating to Sunrise International Ministries for relief work in Sendai province. I truly believe they have been placed there for such a time as this. And please continue to pray for Japan!

Technorati Tags: Japan earthquake, Japan missions, Japan relief, Japan tsunami, Jim & Masako Millard, Sunrise International Ministries

Grieving with Poland

Posted April 10th, 2010 by Jen in history, politics/world news
6 Comments »

I’ve been emailing back and forth today with a friend in Poland. I’m hosting a young Polish girl this summer, the student of my friend who teaches English there. We went over the details of Julia’s itinerary and plans for her stay in the U.S.

Of course, we talked about the tragic plane crash today that killed the President of Poland, along with 96 other Polish political leaders and citizens. My friend emailed me:

“The plane crash is tragic for Poland–so many ‘officials’ lost at one time. Politically, it will have an impact because the presidential election is this year and some of the main opponents to the prime minister’s party were on board the plane–it looks like the party has lost any chance of competing in the election now–what a shame so many people were killed in the same place where 20,000 Polish soldiers were murdered 70 years ago.”

Please offer some prayers for our brothers and sisters in Poland. I was reminded this morning of reason #99 to host a foreign exchange student: as we connect with people around the globe, our capacity for understanding and love expands. I was riveted by the news of the devastating loss even more so because I feel a personal connection to at least two people in Poland.

God’s blessings on Poland. It is a very special place. The reform movement that began the dismantling of communism in east central Europe began in Poland. We have the Poles to thank in large part for the fall of the Berlin Wall. I pray that the new leaders of this significant nation will be bold freedom seekers and lovers of liberty.

Technorati Tags: Poland, Lech Kaczynski, Polish President, plane crash, foreign exchange student

Suite Française and Irene’s Story

Posted April 4th, 2010 by Jen in features, france/french, history, persecuted church, politics/world news, religion
2 Comments »

Suite Française has three parts: the two main novellas, “Storm in June” and “Dolce,” and the Appendices that provide essential details about author Irène Némirovsky’s plans for the book as well as gripping correspondence that highlights the tragic story unfolding in her own family.

Suite Française portrays life in France from June, 1940 to July 1, 1941. The early German occupation of France and its impact on the daily lives of those involved is told with clarity and deep understanding of a depraved humanity and human conduct under significant pressure.

The story opens with residents realizing the Germans are at the gates of Paris. The narratives of a few people are followed as chaos ensues. The reader gets a sense of both the individual and the collective panic, with banks failing, railroads being bombed, houses being overtaken by Nazi soldiers.

The mass exodus from Paris is described in “Storm in June” with a beautiful, expressive tone, as the author relates a scene from a boulevard where families are moving with a dizzying agitation to pack up their families and belongings:

In the darkness the danger seemed to grow. You could smell the suffering in the air, in the silence. Even people who were normally calm and controlled were overwhelmed by anxiety and fear. … Panic obliterated everything that wasn’t animal instinct, involuntary physical reaction. Grab the most valuable things you own in the world and then . . . ! And, on that night, only people – the living and the breathing, the crying and the loving – were precious. Rare was the person who cared about their possessions; everyone wrapped their arms tightly round their wife or child and nothing else mattered; the rest could go up in flames.

The second novella, “Dolce,” describes a subdued and defeated French people in the village of Bussy who must live with an incoming garrison of Wehrmacht troops. We see a settling, an adapting to the new reality of an occupied country. There are collaborators and resisters, and all the characters in between.

Suite Française ends with the German regiment leaving the village of Bussy to continue their fighting in Moscow. The final scene describes the village onlookers watching the enemy pull out.

They had become accustomed to them, had looked at them indifferently, without being afraid. But now the sight of it all made them shudder. The truck, full to bursting with big loaves of black bread, freshly baked and sweet-smelling, the Red Cross vans, with no passengers – for now . . . the field kitchen, bumping along at the end of the procession like a saucepan tied to a dog’s tail. The men began singing, a grave, slow song that drifted away into the night.

About the Author:

Irène Némirovsky, a Jew from Ukraine, was born into a wealthy family that eventually fled the country during the Russian Revolution. The family ended up in Paris, and Irène quickly became a celebrated author in France.

Irène was not what one would consider an observant Jew. In fact, some have called her a self-hating Jew. Her willingness to convert to Catholicism for protection, her unsuccessful attempt to become a French citizen, her usage of anti-Semitic publishers to promote her books — all reveal a woman who was trusting in France and not Yahweh to save her.

But no matter, none of this diminishes the important place in Holocaust literature of Suite Française. You won’t find the spiritual Jewish perspective of an Anne Frank or Elie Wiesel in Irène’s writings, but this just highlights Hitler’s insanity. He didn’t care if you loved or hated being a Jew. The Nazis dealt the same hand of death to both.

Married to Jewish banker Michel Epstein, Irène had two daughters, Denise and Élisabeth. It was these two daughters we have to thank for the survival of the manuscript Suite Française.

By 1940, Jews all over Europe were deeply persecuted, and so it was with Irène’s family. She could no longer get her books published, and her husband could no longer work at the bank because of their Jewish ancestry. Despite having converted to Catholicism and being a popular literary figure in France, Irène was arrested in July 1942 as a “stateless person of Jewish descent” and sent to Auschwitz, where she died on August 17, 1942. Her husband shared the same fate a few months later in the gas chambers.

And what of the children and this book, Suite Française? Denise and Élisabeth were hidden in schools and convents until the war’s end. Their father, before he was taken away, had given them one possession to guard with their lives: a little suitcase which contained a special notebook. Can you imagine these two little orphan girls, about 13 and 5 years old, in hiding and in possession of this one family memento, too afraid to leave it, too afraid to examine its contents?

In fact, for over 50 years, the leatherbound notebook which contained Irène’s two novellas which comprise Suite Française, written in microscopic print to save precious paper, remained unopened inside of this suitcase. Irène’s daughters thought it was their mother’s journal, and knew that reading it would be too painful to bear.

Upon preparing to give her mother’s papers to a French archive in the late 1990′s, Denise finally had the courage to open the notebook. She discovered this extraordinary work, incomplete yet whole, written under the most formidable circumstances. The two novellas were intended to be the beginning of a series of five stories which would encompass the whole of the war, to its end. Irène wrote that the rest of the oeuvre was “in limbo, and what limbo! It’s really in the lap of the gods since it depends on what happens.”

Irène’s writing in Suite Française is remarkable not just for its brilliant composition but its perspective. Irène did not begin writing this book until 1941, literally as these events were unfolding before her. However, Suite Française reads not like the diary of one writing contemporaneously with the historical events, lacking a certain coherence, but it presents a viewpoint usually reserved for one who is a generation removed from the time in question who has had time to reflect.

I wonder if Irène’s placement in the timeline of human history prepared her for such a task? She had already lived as a persecuted Jew through a major war, and experienced firsthand the full circle of events. After the 1918 Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks seized her father’s bank and the Nemirovsky family had to disguise themselves as peasants and flee to Finland.

Denise reported after publication of Suite Française, “For me, the greatest joy is knowing that the book is being read. It is an extraordinary feeling to have brought my mother back to life. It shows that the Nazis did not truly succeed in killing her. It is not vengeance, but it is a victory.”

Universal Pictures has acquired screen rights to Suite Française. I think a better choice might be to make a movie about Irène Némirovsky herself, whose real life story is much more moving than the fiction she wrote.

sources:
NY Times article: As France Burned by Paul Gray
suitefrancaisefamily.com
Museum of Jewish Heritage: Woman of Letters

In other blogs:
dovegreyreader
the coffee spoon

Technorati Tags: France, Irene Nemirovsky, Nazi Germany, Suite Française, World War II

When you feel like giving up

Posted November 20th, 2009 by Jen in family life, politics/world news, religion
6 Comments »

Storm on Sea by Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovsky, 1899

Remember Winston Churchill’s words to Harrow School on a visit in October of 1941:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never–in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

He could not have known fully what was to come. It was only 1941, and several years of terrible, unspeakable war were ahead. Churchill did also say in that same speech something that does, however, lead me to believe he had an inkling:

But we must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally said that the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes months – if it takes years – they do it.

Another lesson I think we may take, just throwing our minds back to our meeting here ten months ago and now, is that appearances are often very deceptive, and as Kipling well says, we must “…meet with Triumph and Disaster. And treat those two impostors just the same.”

You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination.

I feel like giving up almost daily.

I stop and pray. Sometimes there is a breakthrough and the clouds powerfully part and the sun shines through. Sometimes there is no breakthrough, only new struggles. I was struck in Churchill’s speech by the quote from Kipling to treat Triumph and Disaster just the same (from the classic poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling). Which is with courage and humility. As the Bible says, give thanks in all things.

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:18

Be strong today.

Technorati Tags: faith, “If” by Rudyard Kipling, don’t give up, Winston Churchill

The Advent of Freedom: celebrating 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall

Posted November 9th, 2009 by Jen in features, politics/world news
2 Comments »

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In this Thanksgiving month, what a reminder to give thanks to God for freedom, wherever it exists, both on the face of the earth and in our spirits. Where there is no freedom, there is death in every sense.

You can click here to view President Reagan’s “Tear Down this Wall” speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin.

“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Where were you in 1989? I was a freshman/sophomore in college and remember the winds of freedom and the breath of the Spirit of God sweeping across Eastern Europe. The topic was on the lips of everyone I knew, yet I was too young to realize what a momentous and once-in-a-lifetime event this was. I heard about miraculous events in Poland, not understanding exactly what “solidarity” meant, but loving the word.

The collapse of communism, as it unfolded before this young woman, was like a great revival movement, the product of much suffering, much prayer, much sacrifice, and great boldness. I wish I could go back to that scene for a moment and feel again what it felt like, this time with more wisdom and experience.

Celebrate freedom today!

Technorati Tags: Berlin Wall, collapse of communism, Ronald Reagan

Corazon Aquino, former Philippines president, has died

Posted July 31st, 2009 by Jen in politics/world news
3 Comments »

I just read on the AP news:

MANILA, Philippines – Former President Corazon Aquino, who swept away a dictator with a “people power” revolt and then sustained democracy by fighting off seven coup attempts in six years, died on Saturday, her son said. She was 76.

The uprising she led in 1986 ended the repressive 20-year regime of Ferdinand Marcos and inspired nonviolent protests across the globe, including those that ended Communist rule in eastern Europe.

Most of you have probably shed tears over the death of someone you never knew, and this was the case for me as I read the news of this amazing woman and one of my heroes of democracy.

Cory (as she was called) Aquino was a Christian and a deeply devout woman of prayer. I do not pass lightly over that fact. She trusted in the mighty God of all nations to end the repressive dictatorship in her beloved Philippines. Cory had to trust God through many trials. She had been a homemaker, raising four daughters and a son. Her husband was imprisoned by President Ferdinand Marcos because of his outspoken criticism of the regime, for the long years of 1972-1980. She was then widowed, with her husband Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., the opposition leader, being assassinated as he stepped off a plane in 1983. She was suddenly thrust into a very different role.

Her presidency was not perfect, but what she did was to bring a gift to the table that echoed around the world. Freedom is like that. What happened in eastern Europe in the late 1980s is one of her legacies. The relatively non-violent overthrow of Soviet-style communism (and the ending of the Cold War), beginning in Poland, moving on to Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, can be traced to the inspiration of Corazon Aquino, and what she called “Prayer Power.”

Here is a short excerpt from a 1995 University of Oregon Commencement Address given by Corazon Aquino:

I found in public service qualities I did not think I had, and because of Prayer Power, reserves and strength and faith I never suspected. Perhaps, not all of us can do it all the time. And I am greatly relieved to be able to live my own life again. But I believe we must all serve others some time. Service to others, service to our communities, and to our brothers and sisters throughout the world can be fulfilling and addictive. The next time your neighbor, your community or someone somewhere in a country less fortunate than your own calls for help and tempts you again to serve – take my advice – just say yes and find yourself.

Technorati Tags: Corazon Aquino, Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, democracy

The American Revolution and the Marquis de Lafayette

Posted July 5th, 2009 by Jen in education, features, history, politics/world news
3 Comments »

They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and the story of the Marquis de Lafayette fits this expression well. His is the tale of a teenage orphan who travels to a foreign land to offer his services in a David versus Goliath type battle. Winning that battle, he returns to his homeland where he is a key player in the French Revolution.

Historians all agree on the fact that without the significant economic and military aid of the French government, the fledgling United States of America would have likely lost the Revolutionary War against the British. And this particular Frenchman, the Marquis de Lafayette, was perhaps the most crucial piece of French support.

Born in 1757 as Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, he suffered the death of his father before he was two years old and the death of his mother at age 12. His family belonged to the French nobility, so he was left with quite a fortune. In addition, at the age of sixteen, he married into the very wealthy de Noailles family. There was no need to seek fame and fortune in a faraway land on a dangerous mission, so why on earth would this young man, only 19 years old, be so resolved to volunteer for the colonies in the American cause of freedom, a land he had never seen, a people he did not know?

I’m sure the reasons for Lafayette’s service in the American Revolutionary War are complex, and I’ve tried to search out some of his motives. The first thing that comes to mind is his youth. While at first glance it’s his age that strikes me as so uncommon for such a glorious cause, there is also a freshness and vigor and sense of invincibility that comes with youth. However, he did have a wife and young son he left behind when he first landed near Charleston, South Carolina in June of 1777. Being orphaned at a young age and married with child certainly matures one beyond his years. There must be more.

I turned to the issue of revenge. I considered the tragedy of his father’s death–his father was killed by a British cannonball during the Seven Years’ War. For a young man who likely longed to know his father and who he must have revered as a hero, I wondered if Lafayette had found vengeance for his father’s death. To support the American cause of liberty was to defy and destroy British domination. Revenge can only carry one so far, however, and reflecting on how Lafayette put his very life on the line, as well as spending his personal fortune to buttress the American forces, I searched still deeper.

When considering the whole of Lafayette’s life, well beyond the American Revolution, I found in him a profound and immense freedom-fighting spirit that must have propelled him even from youth. Were the American Revolution just about personal glory or youthful fantasy, Lafayette’s quest would have likely ended there. However, as we see him fight for representative government in the French Revolution, it’s clear that Lafayette was one of those unique persons in human history who was born to fulfill an instinctive yearning for freedom, no matter the time or place.

Independence and self-government are ideals that simply resonated with Lafayette. As he served under General George Washington, these two men developed a life-long friendship and considered one another as father and son. Great people like these do find each other, invisibly drawn together by the same passion and intellect.

Lafayette participated in key battles of the Revolution, including those at Brandywine and Yorktown. In addition to military expertise, he exercised great diplomacy in convincing the king of France to increase his support in substantial excess of his original intent.

As Americans celebrate their Independence, I do hope they remember France and one particular Marquis de Lafayette.

sources:
Lafayette, Hero of the American Revolution
Who Served Here? The Marquis de Lafayette

Technorati Tags: American Revolution, Fourth of July, France, French Revolution, Independence, Marquis de Lafayette

Parakeet Morality

Posted March 7th, 2009 by Jen in family life, politics/world news, religion
11 Comments »

How parakeet breeding led me to thoughts on a great moral issue:

I stopped in the pet store yesterday to get some grit for the birds, to aid their digestion. While there, the kids reminded me of one of their pressing concerns. We have a boy and girl parakeet, and the kids keep wondering if they will have babies.

My son begged for a nest to place in the bird cage, just in case. My daughter’s mind was filled with the wonder of baby keets.

The store clerk discouraged all of this. She and I had just finished a discussion about how to work with our birds to turn them into friendly, tame, sit-on-your-finger kind of birds. She pointed out that once parakeets have babies, they will not be tame pets. They will be extremely protective of their brood and you can forget about a sweet housebroken budgie.

I was fuzzy on some issues. What if they mate without all the nice trappings of a brooding box and comfy nest, and the girl lays her eggs on the bottom of the cage? Just throw them out, said the clerk. Take the eggs away, she’ll forget all about them, and she won’t lay any more eggs after a while. Do not encourage breeding, she said, by not putting a nesting area in the cage. Then you’ll get to keep the birds as pets to pamper and cuddle and train.

I couldn’t help thinking about how to dispose of those eggs without the children having a meltdown. Would I flush them down the toilet? Would I toss them out the window? Offer them to someone with a pet snake? Ah, well, they are just parakeet eggs, and the snakes need to eat.

Okay, so the only way for the parakeets to care enough about human companionship instead of protecting their clutch is to prevent them from breeding, and take away their eggs when they do happen to lay them.

For some reason, my mind made a leap this morning, a shocking leap to connect with a great moral issue that I think of often. Abortion. Here is the connection I made.

I wondered if the taking away of a human mother’s baby-in-utero, abortion, has the same effect (the “taming” of humans), and if there is perhaps an underlying societal motivation (from the left) for wanting women and couples to not “breed.” A motivation similar to the parakeet issue: are women and families more easily manipulated and pliable when they don’t have the “mother bear” syndrome, the innate and fierce drive a mother has to look out for the best interest of her baby?

A new mother, of course, will be less interested in say, political issues of whether murderous criminals should be spared the death penalty or whether women should have the “right to choose,” than she will be in the immediate care of her newborn, how to feed and nurture him, and don’t you dare harm my baby.

Does it seems plausible that childless people will be more loyal to the state than to the family? I’m making a leap here, but there is some shifting of interests that occurs when your eggs are stolen away and you’re encouraged to forget about them, be you parakeet or person.

Technorati Tags: abortion, parakeet breeding

Today at the salon…

Posted February 5th, 2009 by Jen in history, politics/world news
6 Comments »

A salon is a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings, often consciously following Horace’s definition of the aims of poetry, “to please and educate” (“aut delectare aut prodesse est“).

From Wikipedia. Most notable in the 17th and 18th centuries in France, the salon was an important place for the exchange of ideas.

This painting is called In the Salon of Madame Geoffrin in 1755, by Anicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemmonier:

Blogs are a bit of a modern salon, I think. So, I wonder, if you were to attend the salon, what would you care to discuss? What books or ideas would you want to explore?

Zakaria Botros, unafraid to defy Islam

Posted January 25th, 2009 by Jen in features, persecuted church, politics/world news, religion
9 Comments »

He has been named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1″ by al-Insan al-Jadid, an Arabic newspaper, and by merely looking at this elderly Coptic priest, one would fail to see why.

However, mass conversions to Christianity as a result of his ministry are the reason for the label. About six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, and an Islamic cleric admitted on al-Jazeera TV not too long ago that many of these conversions are attributed to Botros’ public ministry.

What is his secret, and how has he survived? I believe his greatest asset is his command of classic Arabic and his TV show broadcast in Arabic into the heart of Muslim territory. Born in Egypt, Botros has been hosting Truth Talk since 2003, a weekly 90 minute show where he expertly exposes the inherent contradictions of Islam.

Because Zakaria Botros knows Arabic and has read all of the teachings of Muhammed, the Quran, and countless other Muslim books, he is in an unusually strategic position to counter the inconsistencies of Islam with Islam itself, not just the Bible or Christian teaching. Botros is ultimately interested in saving souls, but is aware that a traditional evangelical approach will not work. He explained this recently:

I am not against Muslims although I am against Islam as a false religion. I don’t want to disgrace Muslims but to expose Islam. My ultimate intention is to glorify God and to save people, especially Muslims. Muslims are victims. Muhammad deceived them as he himself was deceived by Satan. Muslims believe that Muhammad is the best prophet, that the Quran is the only proper book from God, and Islam is the only religion from God. Muslims are in bad need to be saved from these false beliefs.

One example of how Botros will expose Islam with his polemic, debating style, was his lengthy exposure of a certain embarrassing aspect of Islamic law, which Islamic authorities are unable to rebut:

Botros spent three years bringing to broad public attention a scandalous — and authentic — hadith stating that women should “breastfeed” strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time. A leading hadith scholar, Abd al-Muhdi, was confronted with this issue on the live talk show of popular Arabic host Hala Sirhan. Opting to be truthful, al-Muhdi confirmed that going through the motions of breastfeeding adult males is, according to sharia, a legitimate way of making married women “forbidden” to the men with whom they are forced into contact — the logic being that, by being “breastfed,” the men become like “sons” to the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them.

To make matters worse, Ezzat Atiyya, head of the Hadith department at al-Azhar University — Sunni Islam’s most authoritative institution — went so far as to issue a fatwa legitimatizing “Rida’ al-Kibir” (sharia’s term for “breastfeeding the adult”), which prompted such outrage in the Islamic world that it was subsequently recanted.

Another telling illustration of how Zakaria Botros forces Muslims to examine the roots of their faith is this:

One recent episode of Truth Talk, aired Nov. 21, cut to 20 separate clips, most of Cairo’s respected Al-Azhar University Sheikh Khaled El-Gendy, to debate the age of Aisha when she became Muhammad’s second wife. Islamic hadiths (the sayings and actions of Muhammad) say she was 6 years old when married and 9 when the marriage was consummated (and reportedly returned to play with her toys afterward). Yet many scholars—and a controversial new novel about Aisha, The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones that was dropped from Random House’s list because of Muslim threats—have tried to paper over the obvious morality issue of child marriage with assertions that Aisha was 14 or even 18. What’s at stake, it becomes clear as the episode unfolds, is whether the Quran and the hadiths can be both true and exemplary.

Whether Zakaria Botros is confronting universal jihad or the inferiority of women, he is always careful to painstakingly cover all the sources, quoting the original Islamic texts and inviting a response from the ulema, the expert Muslim theologians who articulate sharia law. Al-dalil we al-burhan, evidence and proof, is what he demands.

You may wonder how Zakaria Botros is still alive. You must know that any one of his statements would bring death if he were to be roaming the streets preaching in any Islamic town. He’s been jailed twice for preaching the gospel to Muslims, and was sentenced to life in prison. Miraculously, the judge instead released him on the condition that he be forced into exile – Botros had to leave Egypt for good.

After having ministered in Cairo for over 30 years, Botros moved to England. Since then, he “retired” into his airwave ministry. It seems the threats are just beginning. Botros is sure he’d be dead were it not for broadcasting from an undisclosed location. Jihadist groups have posted death threats worth up to a reported $60 million for his head. Zakaria Botros knows the seriousness of this. Growing up as a child in Alexandria, Egypt, Muslim attackers killed his young teenage brother. His response:

Instead of anger against Muslims, the Lord saved me from that. I had pity on them.

Botros does more than defy Islam. He offers an alternative, the truth of Christianity, and he consistently opens and closes his show with an invitation to his viewers to come to Christ. With the growing worldwide hostility to anyone who speaks out against Islam (for example, the Dutch lawmaker currently facing prosecution for anti-Islamic statements), Botros is truly fearless.

“Fear? I fear nothing,” says Botros. “My dictionary does not contain the word fear. I believe in God and I believe that the epistle of Ephesians says we are created in Jesus Christ for a plan, which was engaged from the early beginning. No one can cut it, and when it is completed no one can continue it.”

photo: World Magazine
sources: World Magazine, National Review Online,

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Islam, Zakaria Botros, Muslim, evangelizing Muslims

Berthe Fraser, from Housewife to French Resistance Hero

Posted January 18th, 2009 by Jen in features, france/french, germany, persecuted church, politics/world news
14 Comments »

In Nazi occupied France during the dark days of WWII, there was a group of valiant and daring individuals known as the French Resistance. They dared to defy the vice-grip of Nazi Germany (as well as the French collaborators) using stealth, reconnaissance, infiltration, and whatever means necessary to save their beloved country and fellow man from destruction. Most of these brave souls were subject to betrayal, unspeakable torture, or death. One of these members of the French Resistance appeared to be an ordinary housewife, but Berthe Fraser was anything but ordinary.

Berthe Fraser was among hundreds of people who rose to the treacherous task of defending France. Be they a housewife, a mother, a Catholic, a Jew, a communist, an artist, or a politician, these resistance fighters came from all layers of society, both male and female, young and old, and without their heroic acts, Hitler’s march through France may not have been halted.

The French Resistance took many forms, from groups of armed guerilla bands who escaped to the mountains, known as the Maquis, to organizers of escape networks for Jews and other targets of the Nazis, to publishers of underground newspapers, to those who carried out sabotage operations, to couriers who carried coded messages back and forth between Allied members.

Mrs. Fraser’s story begins with her birth in 1894 as Berthe Emilie Vicogne. She married an Englishman and thus became a British subject. When the rumblings of WWII hit France, Berthe Fraser was going about her domestic life in her hometown of Arras, France, all the while organizing an underground network that saved the lives of countless English agents and pilots. Her husband reported later to an English newspaper:

My wife was the head of a great movement, which worried the Germans stupid. She was the hub of this big wheel. Her first work was in 1940 when there were hundreds of British soldiers roaming around France. My wife started a movement which grew until it was a sort of underground channel. She sent dozens of British soldiers by devious means to the coast where they were smuggled to England.

Twice betrayed but never broken, Berthe Fraser was an unshakable woman for whom I have the utmost awe and respect. I can relate to where she was in life; a woman in her 40s, tending to her home. I don’t know if she had any children, but as a woman, I feel the risks of undertaking the work of the Resistance were doubly perilous.

I wish there was more information available about this woman. I know she suffered extreme torture during her second capture, and this trauma surely accounts for the lack of details. Who wants to recall the horror? I can find no record of a public interview. I discovered in the back matter of the book SOE in France by M.R.D. Foot, that Berthe Fraser died in 1956, her health never restored.

In 1941, someone betrayed Berthe, and she was arrested by the Gestapo. She spent 15 months in a Belgian prison, and was released in December 1942. Did this imprisonment deter her? No. Berthe immediately jumped back into the work of fighting Hitler’s campaign of death and terror.

No sooner had she got out than Berthe immediately contacted the officers sent into France from England, and embarked on a new phase of anti–Nazi activity, helping the Allies by supplying English agents with a complete support network of Resistance fighters. She looked after the foreigners, providing them with shelter, transport, and safe hiding places where they could engage in their clandestine missions. She arranged liaisons, transmitted vital messages, and took on the very dangerous role of courier, travelling far and wide by car, sometimes on foot, laden with documents, arms, and occasionally the dynamite required for sabotage operations.

Somehow she managed to evade discovery, collecting the supplies of weapons that were dropped by night at secret locations by British planes, hiding the vital goods in safe houses where they could only be released on presenting her signature.

Berthe had to go to great lengths to protect her English charges. Once, entrusted with the care of the well–known English agent Wing Commander Yeo–Thomas, known as “The White Rabbit,” she arranged a funeral cortege to transport the senior officer, hidden inside the hearse. He says she was “one of the great Resistance heroines…. She worked impartially for any French or British organisation that needed her.”

From the Charlotte Gray website, an excellent Warner Bros. movie about a Scottish woman living in England, parachuted into France by the British Government (SOE) to support the French Resistance.

Berthe was betrayed again in 1944, unbelievably by one of the very English agents whose life she saved. She spent six months in solitary confinement at Loos where she was tortured every day. She was stripped and flogged in front of Nazi troops and condemned to death. Never did she betray her friends in the Resistance or the English army. How many lives she saved through her own afflictions will never be known.

When the Allies stormed the prison on September 1, 1944, Berthe Fraser was just hanging onto life, and she is reported to have said, “Thank you boys, you are just in time.”

The story of Berthe Fraser stands as just one of the many heroines of WWII. If you’re interested in further accounts of the women of the French Resistance, I highly recommend the following resources:

Sisters in Resistance, a documentary film by Independent Lens.

SISTERS IN RESISTANCE tells the story of four young women who risked their lives to fight Nazi oppression and brutality in occupied France, not because they themselves were Jewish or in danger of being arrested, but because it was the right thing to do. Within two years of the start of the Occupation, they had all been arrested by the Gestapo and were deported as political prisoners to Ravensbruck concentration camp.

The documentary follows the paths of the four women — Geneviève de Gaulle Anthonioz, Jacqueline Pery d’Alincourt, Anise Postel-Vinay and Germaine Tillion — from before the war to the present. The women speak about what compelled them to resist, their roles in the Resistance, their arrests, deportation and liberation. They talk about the struggle to rebuild their lives after the war, their desire for children and their continued battles in the name of justice.

Charlotte Gray, a Warner Bros. film.

Set in Nazi–occupied France at the height of World War II, Charlotte Gray tells the compelling story of a young Scottish woman working with the French Resistance in the hope of rescuing her lover, a missing RAF pilot.

Based on the best–selling novel by Sebastian Faulks, the film stars Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon and Rupert Penry-Jones. Charlotte Gray is directed by Gillian Armstrong and produced by Sarah Curtis and Douglas Rae.

For Freedom, a novel by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. An excellent young adult book for grades 6-12.

Life for Suzanne David, a 13-year-old French schoolgirl and music apprentice, dramatically changes in May, 1940, when she and her best friend witness the brutal death of a neighbor when a bomb drops directly in front of them. Soon the Germans take over Cherbourg, and the Davids are forced from their home into poverty. Then Suzanne is given the opportunity to help the Allies. Bravely, she risks her life, family, and singing career in order to spy for the Resistance. The pace of this suspenseful novel, told in first person and based on a true story, moves swiftly into action within the first chapter, showing the young heroine as strong, courageous, and clever. Filled, but not laden, with the events of the war, and peppered with French language and the culture of music, this novel will appeal to readers who enjoy history and espionage.

Outwitting the Gestapo, a memoir by Lucie Aubrac.

A suspenseful rendering of Aubrac’s experiences as a French Resistance fighter during WWII. This memoir owes its existence to the 1983 extradition to France of Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon.” In order to refute Barbie’s defenders and former collaborators, Aubrac told her story publicly for the first time- -and it became a bestseller in France. Focusing on a nine-month period that begins with the conception of her second child, Aubrac looks back 40 years at experiences of enduring intensity. During the war, the author, her Jewish husband Raymond, and other “resistants” published and distributed underground newspapers, found new identities and homes for fugitives, forged permits, stole guns, and blew up roads and bridges–all routine Resistance activities.

What makes this account special, however, is Aubrac’s irrepressible energy and resourcefulness, and the graceful way in which she interweaves her separate but parallel lives. As a mother and wife struggling in a wartime economy, she bartered for hard-to-find items; as a devoted schoolteacher, she applied the lessons of history to current events; as a secret member of the Resistance, she couldn’t disclose her true identity even to her most trusted colleagues, switching names and identities like a quick-change artist. Three times, she helped free her husband from prison. The last incarceration was the most harrowing: Walking into a trap, Raymond was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to die by Barbie himself. Despite her anguish, Aubrac tricked her husband’s captors into meetings and masterminded an intricate rescue. The Aubracs’ escape by airlift to London, where their baby was born, is tremendously exciting. A breathtaking account that feeds the soul as much as it satisfies the appetite for vicarious danger.

Sisters in the Resistance by Margaret Collins Weitz.

Weitz makes an important and unique contribution to the literature of the French Resistance and the history of World War II. Although countless studies have documented the heroic exploits of Resistance leaders during the course of World War II, few have focused on the pivotal role women played in the various underground organizations. Based on interviews with surviving resistants, this oral history contains the harrowing and often previously unrecorded testimony of a remarkable set of women. The author’s sensitive narrative places these riveting anecdotes and reminiscences into proper historical and sociological context as she examines and analyzes the ever expanding duties and assignments undertaken by women as France’s war-within-a-war continued to rage. An absolutely stunning and compelling chronicle of dauntless courage and unflagging patriotism.

Code Name Christiane Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance by Claire Chevrillon.

A witness to the bleak fate of French Jewry in Nazi-dominated France, this remarkable author recounts her experiences from 1939 to 1945 in a personal though emotionally reserved way that makes her family’s tragedies particularly poignant. Her parents were upper-class, assimilated Jews; her father, Andre Chevrillon, was a member of the French Academy, a man Edith Wharton called “the first literary critic in France.” An English teacher in Paris when war broke out, Claire gives abundant details about the first days of the occupation, when France became a nation divided between the Petainists and those less willing to accommodate Hitler’s designs. In 1942, as repressive laws limited Jewish freedom (Claire’s mother was effectively imprisoned by her fear of leaving home wearing the yellow star), as her brother-in-law languished in a POW camp and her cousins were persecuted and eventually deported, Chevrillon joined the resistance, first in air operations and then in the code service, where she encoded and decoded messages between the free French government in London and de Gaulle’s Paris delegation. Chevrillon, who had contact with some of the most prominent members of the resistance, was betrayed in 1943 and spent four harrowing months in prison. The author’s goal was “to set forward the facts… not to analyze myself or my characters.” But her story, told without elaboration, is as dramatic and compelling as any fiction.

An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary and Memoir of Virginia D’Albert-Lake by Virginia D’Albert-Lake.

In 1937, Virginia Roush, a strong-minded young woman from St. Petersburg, Florida, married a Frenchman, becoming Virginia d’Albert-Lake, and moved to Paris. During the war, she kept a diary, including almost larkish reports of her Resistance work. Part of an escape line that smuggled downed Allied airmen out of the country, she took them on secret sightseeing tours of Paris. In June, 1944, she was arrested by the Germans and sent to a sequence of concentration camps that included three spells in Ravensbrück. (The third time she was transferred from Ravensbrück, she weighed seventy-six pounds.) This book, comprising a diary written before her capture and a memoir written after her liberation, is an indelible portrait of extraordinary strength of character. In the diary she seems naïve and spirited; in the memoir she is sombre, reflective, and attentive to every detail.

Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany by Marthe Cohn.

This compelling memoir is testament to how extraordinary circumstances can transform a life-and how an extraordinary person reacts to difficult circumstances. Cohn was a typical French-Jewish teenager when WWII broke out, but as it did for millions of others, the war transformed her life in unimaginable ways. “There was no time to be frightened,” she and Holden, a veteran journalist, write. The first part of the book chronicles her family and friends’ response to the war. That countless other books have described the effects of the Nazi onslaught – the life-and-death consequences of the unthinkable decisions many were forced to make – makes her descriptions no less powerful and tragic. The narrative turns into a quasi thriller in its second half, depicting how the death of Cohn’s fiance led her, now a nurse, to join the Free French forces in the fight to defeat the Nazis. A blonde, fluent German speaker who never mentioned to her superiors that she was a Jew, she went on several life-threatening missions into German territory, earning France’s highest military honors. But she describes her actions without self-aggrandizement. What comes through is the importance of courageous individual action in the most dire situations. This is the amazing story of a woman who lived through one of the worst times in human history, losing family members to the Nazis but surviving with her spirit and integrity intact. Cohn now lives in California.

Carve Her Name With Pride by RJ Minney. Also on film.

Carve Her Name With Pride is the inspiring story of the half-French Violette Szabo who was born in Paris in 1921 to an English motor-car dealer, and a French mother. She met and married Etienne Szabo, a Captain in the French Foreign Legion in 1940. Shortly after the birth of her daughter, Tania, her husband died at El Alamein. She became a FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) and was recruited into the SOE and underwent secret agent training. Her first trip to France was completed successfully even though she was arrested and then released by the French Police.

On June 7th, 1944, Szabo was parachuted into Limoges. Her task was to coordinate the work of the French Resistance in the area in the first days after D-Day. She was captured by the SS ‘Das Reich’ Panzer Division and handed over to the Gestapo in Paris for interrogation. From Paris, Violette Szabo was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp where she was executed in January 1945. She was only 23 and for her courage was posthumously awarded The George Cross and the Croix de Guerre.

A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm.

Vera Atkins, a legendary figure of British wartime intelligence, died in 2000 at the age of 92, but her secrets did not die with her, thanks to the brilliant investigative reporting of Sarah Helm, a noted British journalist and editor. Her book, A Life in Secrets, combines the history of a pivotal era with the nail-biting drama of the heroic operatives who were dropped into Nazi-occupied territories to contact and help form a resistance army.

Atkins worked for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which was formed in the dark days of 1940 after the British retreat at Dunkirk. Its mission was to wage a secret war until regular forces could be amassed to retake the continent. Her responsibilities were to recruit and train agents for SOE’s French section. Some 400 men and women were dispatched, and of these about 100 ended up “missing presumed dead.” Of special concern to Atkins were 12 female agents whom she could not account for after the war. Much of the book details her dogged pursuit of clues to their fates, leading to revelations of their incredible bravery when they were captured, sent to concentration camps and put to death.

Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France by Rita Kramer.

The true story of women agents of the secret World War II Special Operations Executive, mandated by Winston Churchill to “set Europe ablaze” by organizing resistance in occupied Europe during the prelude to D Day. Intrigue and heroism, adventure and betrayal figure in this account of British-led efforts to defeat the Nazis in wartime France, based on extensive research in records, documents, letters and memoirs, and the author’s interviews with surviving agents and officials. Despite sporadic defeat and betrayal, SOE leaders managed to delay the arrival of German reinforcements to the Normandy beachhead, contributing to the eventual Allied victory. Details of the operations of SOE recounted here remained secret for decades after the war, finally revealing the human cost of the reconnaissance and sabotage efforts that helped to shorten the conflict.

Technorati Tags: Berthe Fraser, French Resistance, France, Nazi Germany, Hitler, women in history

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: literary giant, light of truth

Posted January 13th, 2009 by Jen in features, politics/world news, religion
6 Comments »

Just over five months ago, the Russian novelist and historian, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (December 11, 1918 – August 3, 2008), died in his homeland. What a loss to the world, this giant of the twentieth century who wrote from a Christian worldview to change the world.

Through the writings of Solzhenitsyn, the West became acquainted with the Gulag, the forced labor camps of the Soviet Union, in which he served an eight-year term for criticizing Joseph Stalin in a private letter to a friend. Solzhenitsyn’s experiences in the labor camps formed the basis of his groundbreaking novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. His masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, came about a decade later, a scorching detail of four decades of Soviet terror and oppression. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.

At the end of Solzhenitsyn’s term in the labor camps, he was sent to internal exile in Kazakhstan, a common fate of political prisoners. During his imprisonment and exile, Solzhenitsyn turned deeply philosophical and spiritual and threw off the Marxism of his former days as a Red Army captain. His story sort of parallels that of Dostoevsky, who also spent time in exile in Siberia and had a quest for faith a hundred years before Solzhenitsyn.

Solzhenitsyn was finally freed from exile in 1956 under the Khrushchev regime, and spent his time teaching and writing. However, after the ousting of Khrushchev in 1964, things took a turn for the worse once again. The KGB began seizing his manuscripts, and by 1974, Solzhenitsyn lived in exile once again. Once the KGB found the manuscripts for the first part of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, deported, and stripped of his Soviet citizenship.

He found refuge in Germany, then Switzerland, and finally, the United States, where he ended up spending almost two decades.
In June of 1978, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was invited to speak at Harvard University, and began by addressing the graduates with a reminder that Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.”

Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.

The entire text of this speech is brilliant and prophetic for 2009, and I do hope you take the time to read it. This portion of that Harvard address, in which Solzhenitsyn speaks of courage, or the lack thereof, is especially insightful:

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

One who has seen the depths of evil and is a person of any courage must tell the truth of the matter, as Solzhenitsyn has done time after time. From various writings and interviews I’ve come across, Solzhenitsyn is best characterized by Truth–he is compelled to reveal it. Being the remarkable, profound writer that he was, his words cannot be paraphrased by anything I could attempt to cobble together, so here are some more choice morsels from his pen:

Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive. Source

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity? Source.

Issues in Solzhenitsyn’s writings revolve around matters of conscience. He writes of God, justice, how people should live rightly in a corrupt nation, how the state has taken the place of the church, and always, truth.

Technorati Tags: Russia, Christianity, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Truth, Stalin, The Gulag, faith, Soviet Union

I support Israel.

Posted January 11th, 2009 by Jen in persecuted church, politics/world news
15 Comments »

Just wanted to say that. Because I am SICK of the thousands of protesters from D.C. to Denmark who scream Free Palestine, and whine and curse about the cruelty and “holocaust” that Israel is perpetrating against Gaza. How DARE they even use the term holocaust, that is completely revolting to me. Israel must defend herself.

Where were all the shrieking protesters for the past two or three years as Hamas has been fiercely pursuing the total annihilation of Israel, raining rockets into Israel, intentionally killing civilians, while Israel has always bent over backwards to avoid civilian casualties? Oh, I forgot, they were busy actively promoting the destruction of American civilization on every front, the very civilization that’s given them the freedom to be such double-standard double-speakers. And in Europe, where the bulk of the protests have been taking place, they were too busy enacting Sharia law.

How can civilized people who truly care about human life be supporting these terrorists who purposely use human shields, carry out military operations from schools and hospitals, and proudly train up their children to be suicide bombers? Because if you’re not supporting Israel in this issue, you are certainly supporting Hamas terrorists and radical Islamic anti-semitic jihadists who fund them. There is no other choice no matter how one tries to frame it in the current wishy-washy-it’s-cool-and-intellectual-to-be-anti-American-pro-Palestinian cultural trend.

I support Israel.

Tags: Gaza War, Hamas, Islamic terrorists, Israel, Palestine, terrorists

Helen Suzman, voice of freedom for South Africa

Posted January 4th, 2009 by Jen in features, politics/world news
4 Comments »

Helen Suzman lived long enough to greet 2009, by one day. This extraordinary anti-apartheid activist from South Africa, whose name is as great as that of Nelson Mandela in the fight for true freedom for black South Africans, died on January 1, 2009.

Suzman served in the South African parliament from 1953 to 1989, and fought a long, brave battle against government oppression of the country’s black majority. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and was one of the few white lawmakers to fight against the injustices of racially discriminatory regulations and ways of life.

For 13 of her years in parliament, Helen Suzman was the only lawmaker opposing the endless racist legislation introduced by the National Party government. She was called a “vicious little cat” by former South African President P.W. Botha and “An enemy of the state” by Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe – titles she wore a bit proudly in her maverick way.

Her story reminds me of another member of parliament in another country in another era. Just last week I watched the moving Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce (1759-1833), an evangelical Christian who was a member of the English Parliament. For 18 years, Wilberforce regularly introduced anti-slavery motions in parliament, and was also a lonely voice who fought on despite enormous odds. Wilberforce eventually passed a motion to end the slave trade in Britain, and in due course, an end to slavery itself in the British empire.
A century later, another battle was to be fought, and a daughter was born to Lithuanian-Jewish parents who had fled to a mining town near Johannesburg, South Africa, from their home country’s anti-Semitism. This child, Helen, grew up, and despite her white, sheltered, and privileged upbringing, came to see the tribulations of the black population and the evils of South Africa’s racial laws.

I first learned of South Africa’s practice of apartheid (social and political policy of racial segregation enforced by law) during high school. I read Alan Paton’s deeply moving novel Cry the Beloved Country for an AP English class, the greatest piece of literature to emerge out of South Africa. As a teenager, this was the most profound book I had ever read, and even now, over 20 years later, I still have not read a more penetrating, insightful, or beautiful novel.

Paton tells the story of a Zulu pastor searching a corrupt city for his son Absalom, and their lives intersect with a white landowner and his own son in a most tragic way, highlighting the racial divide of South Africa. The movie version of Cry the Beloved Country is also outstanding, with a brilliant performance by James Earl Jones as Rev. Kumalo.

What Alan Paton did for raising popular awareness of the plight of black South Africans through poetic prose, Helen Suzman did through tireless work in parliament. Back in 1967, Suzman visited Nelson Mandela in prison on Robben Island, where he served 18 of his 27 years in prison for anti-apartheid activity. Nelson later recalled of Helen Suzman:

It was an odd and wonderful sight to see this courageous woman peering into our cells and strolling around our courtyard. She was the first and only woman ever to grace our cells.

Mrs. Suzman was one of the few, if not the only, member of Parliament who took an interest in the plight of political prisoners.

Helen Suzman’s tireless crusading for the cause of the repressed black South Africans paid off, and apartheid began to be dismantled from 1990-1993, and Nelson Mandela was elected as South Africa’s first black president in 1994. Suzman was at Nelson Mandela’s side in 1996 when he signed South Africa’s new constitution. Mandela later awarded her with his country’s highest public honor in recognition of her years of campaigning on behalf of freedom for all South Africans.

Sunday, January 4, 2009 was the funeral for Helen Suzman in Johannesburg’s West Park cemetery’s Jewish section. Hundreds of mourners gathered to honor this courageous woman who fearlessly battled against apartheid.

I hope you have been encouraged by the story of Helen Suzman, and inspired to be a courageous truth-seeker in your own world.

Call to Prayer for the DRC

Posted December 30th, 2008 by Jen in persecuted church, politics/world news, religion
10 Comments »

A map of the northeastern DR Congo, Uganda and Sudan, showing attacks attributed to the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebels killed more than 400 people in Christmas massacres in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the Caritas aid charity said Tuesday. (from Yahoo News).

The archbishop of Dungu-Doruma, Monsignor Richard Domba, told AFP that at least 150 people had been killed at a Christmas Day service at Faradje and later, 80 at Duru and at least 200 others at Doruma and in the surrounding villages.

“It is a dramatic situation that we are living through here,” he said. The rebels “are indescribably barbarous and savage.

“They kill with machetes, axes and clubs. They burn people alive with their property in their homes.”

The LRA also “captured young boys and girls whom they will conscript and force to work in their fields,” he said.

The history of the unrest in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) is long and complex, involving notable European powers, especially Belgium. Below is a Timeline of the Democratic Republic of Congo from the BBC (note the Sept. 2005 entry, in which the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels of Uganda infiltrate the DR Congo via Sudan).

There has been a heavy involvement of the UN in the Congo conflicts, dating back to about 1960, and I’m not so sure how much good they’ve done, considering things like the allegations of gold and arms trafficking by UN peacekeepers in Ituri region (May 2007).

At any rate, as Christians whose brothers and sisters in Christ are being massacred, raped, displaced by the tens of thousands, and grievously injured in so many ways in the DRC, we must pray. If you want a place to give, World Relief, a Christian Relief Organization, has been delivering food and aid to local churches caught in the middle of the violence and terror of the civil war in the DRC that has claimed the lives of over 5 million people in the past 12 years.

I met a local woman last month who runs a branch of World Relief here in Central Oregon. Until I met her, I really wasn’t aware of this crisis. Through her passion and outreach to the Congolese, I’ve suddenly noticed the DRC in the news–you know how that is, it’s been there all along.

Timeline: Democratic Republic of Congo

A chronology of key events:

1200s – Rise of Kongo empire, centred in modern northern Angola and including extreme western Congo and territories round lakes Kisale and Upemba in central Katanga (now Shaba).

1482 – Portuguese navigator Diogo Cao becomes the first European to visit the Congo; Portuguese set up ties with the king of Kongo.

16th-17th centuries – British, Dutch, Portuguese and French merchants engage in slave trade through Kongo intermediaries.

1870s – Belgian King Leopold II sets up a private venture to colonise Kongo.

1874-77 – British explorer Henry Stanley navigates Congo river to the Atlantic Ocean.

Belgian colonisation

1879-87 – Leopold commissions Stanley to establish the king’s authority in the Congo basin.

1884-85 – European powers at the Conference of Berlin recognise Leopold’s claim to the Congo basin.

1885 – Leopold announces the establishment of the Congo Free State, headed by himself.

1891-92 – Belgians conquer Katanga.

1892-94 – Eastern Congo wrested from the control of East African Arab and Swahili-speaking traders.

1908 – Belgian state annexes Congo amid protests over killings and atrocities carried out on a mass scale by Leopold’s agents. Millions of Congolese are said to have been killed or worked to death during Leopold’s control of the territory.

1955 – Belgian Professor Antoin van Bilsen publishes a “30-Year Plan” for granting the Congo increased self-government.

1959 – Belgium begins to lose control over events in the Congo following serious nationalist riots in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa).

Post-independence turmoil

1960 June – Congo becomes independent with Patrice Lumumba as prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu as president.

1960 July – Congolese army mutinies; Moise Tshombe declares Katanga independent; Belgian troops sent in ostensibly to protect Belgian citizens and mining interests; UN Security Council votes to send in troops to help establish order, but the troops are not allowed to intervene in internal affairs.

1960 September – Kasavubu dismisses Lumumba as prime minister.

1960 December – Lumumba arrested.

1961 February – Lumumba murdered, reportedly with US and Belgian complicity.

1961 August – UN troops begin disarming Katangese soldiers.

1963 – Tshombe agrees to end Katanga’s secession.

1964 – President Kasavubu appoints Tshombe prime minister.

Mobutu years

1965 – Kasavubu and Tshombe ousted in a coup led by Joseph Mobutu.

1971 – Joseph Mobutu renames the country Zaire and himself Mobutu Sese Seko; also Katanga becomes Shaba and the river Congo becomes the river Zaire.

1973-74 – Mobutu nationalises many foreign-owned firms and forces European investors out of the country.

1977 – Mobutu invites foreign investors back, without much success; French, Belgian and Moroccan troops help repulse attack on Katanga by Angolan-based rebels.

1989 – Zaire defaults on loans from Belgium, resulting in a cancellation of development programmes and increased deterioration of the economy.

1990 – Mobutu agrees to end the ban on multiparty politics and appoints a transitional government, but retains substantial powers.

1991 – Following riots in Kinshasa by unpaid soldiers, Mobutu agrees to a coalition government with opposition leaders, but retains control of the security apparatus and important ministries.

1993 – Rival pro- and anti-Mobutu governments created.

1994 – Mobutu agrees to the appointment of Kengo Wa Dondo, an advocate of austerity and free-market reforms, as prime minister.

1996-97 – Tutsi rebels capture much of eastern Zaire while Mobutu is abroad for medical treatment.

Aftermath of Mobutu

1997 May – Tutsi and other anti-Mobutu rebels, aided principally by Rwanda, capture the capital, Kinshasa; Zaire is renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo; Laurent-Desire Kabila installed as president.

1998 August – Rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda rise up against Kabila and advance on Kinshasa. Zimbabwe, Namibia send troops to repel them. Angolan troops also side with Kabila. The rebels take control of much of the east of DR Congo.

1999 – Rifts emerge between Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) rebels supported by Uganda and Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) rebels backed by Rwanda.

Lusaka peace accord signed

1999 July – The six African countries involved in the war sign a ceasefire accord in Lusaka. The following month the MLC and RCD rebel groups sign the accord.

2000 – UN Security Council authorises a 5,500-strong UN force to monitor the ceasefire but fighting continues between rebels and government forces, and between Rwandan and Ugandan forces.

2001 January – President Laurent Kabila is shot dead by a bodyguard. Joseph Kabila succeeds his father.

2001 February – Kabila meets Rwandan President Paul Kagame in Washington. Rwanda, Uganda and the rebels agree to a UN pull-out plan. Uganda, Rwanda begin pulling troops back from the frontline.

2001 May – US refugee agency says the war has killed 2.5 million people, directly or indirectly, since August 1998. Later, a UN panel says the warring parties are deliberately prolonging the conflict to plunder gold, diamonds, timber and coltan, used in the making of mobile phones.

2002 January – Eruption of Mount Nyiragongo devastates much of the city of Goma.

Search for peace

2002 April – Peace talks in South Africa: Kinshasa signs a power-sharing deal with Ugandan-backed rebels, under which the MLC leader would be premier. Rwandan-backed RCD rebels reject the deal.

2002 July – Presidents of DR Congo and Rwanda sign a peace deal under which Rwanda will withdraw troops from the east and DR Congo will disarm and arrest Rwandan Hutu gunmen blamed for the killing of the Tutsi minority in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

2002 September – Presidents of DR Congo and Uganda sign peace accord under which Ugandan troops will leave DR Congo.

2002 September/October – Uganda, Rwanda say they have withdrawn most of their forces from the east. UN-sponsored power-sharing talks begin in South Africa.

2002 December – Peace deal signed in South Africa between Kinshasa government and main rebel groups. Under the deal rebels and opposition members are to be given portfolios in an interim government.

Interim government

2003 April – President Kabila signs a transitional constitution, under which an interim government will rule pending elections.

2003 May – Last Ugandan troops leave eastern DR Congo.

2003 June – French soldiers arrive in Bunia, spearheading a UN-mandated rapid-reaction force.

President Kabila names a transitional government to lead until elections in two years time. Leaders of main former rebel groups are sworn in as vice-presidents in July.

2003 August – Interim parliament inaugurated.

2004 March – Gunmen attack military bases in Kinshasa in an apparent coup attempt.

2004 June – Reported coup attempt by rebel guards is said to have been neutralised.

2004 December – Fighting in the east between the Congolese army and renegade soldiers from a former pro-Rwanda rebel group. Rwanda denies being behind the mutiny.

2005 March – UN peacekeepers say they have killed more then 50 militia members in an offensive, days after nine Bangladeshi soldiers serving with the UN are killed in the north-east.

New constitution

2005 May – New constitution, with text agreed by former warring factions, is adopted by parliament.

2005 September – Uganda warns that its troops may re-enter DR Congo after a group of Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebels enter via Sudan.

2005 November – A first wave of soldiers from the former Zairean army returns after almost eight years of exile in the neighbouring Republic of Congo.

2005 December – Voters back a new constitution, already approved by parliament, paving the way for elections in 2006.

International Court of Justice rules that Uganda must compensate DR Congo for rights abuses and the plundering of resources in the five years up to 2003.

2006 February – New constitution comes into force; new national flag is adopted.

2006 March – Warlord Thomas Lubanga becomes first war crimes suspect to face charges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He is accused of forcing children into active combat.

2006 May – Thousands are displaced in the north-east as the army and UN peacekeepers step up their drive to disarm irregular forces ahead of the elections.

Free elections

2006 July – Presidential and parliamentary polls are held – the first free elections in four decades. With no clear winner in the presidential vote, incumbent leader Joseph Kabila and opposition candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba prepare to contest a run-off poll on 29 October. Forces loyal to the two candidates clash in the capital.

2006 November – Joseph Kabila is declared winner of October’s run-off presidential election. The poll has the general approval of international monitors.

2006 December – Forces of renegade General Laurent Nkunda and the UN-backed army clash in North Kivu province, prompting some 50,000 people to flee. The UN Security Council expresses concern about the fighting.

2007 March – Government troops and forces loyal to opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba clash in Kinshasa.

2007 April – DRCongo, Rwanda and Burundi relaunch the regional economic bloc Great lakes Countries Economic Community, known under its French acronym CEPGL.

2007 April – Jean-Pierre Bemba leaves for Portugal, ending a three-week political stalemate in Kinshasa, during which he sheltered in the South African embassy.

2007 May – The UN investigates allegations of gold and arms trafficking by UN peacekeepers in Ituri region.

2007 June – War could break out again in the east, warns the Archbishop of Bukavu, Monsignor Francois-Xavier Maroy.

2007 June – Radio Okapi broadcaster Serge Maheshe is shot dead in Bukavu, the third journalist killed in the country since 2005.

2007 August – Uganda and DRCongo agree to try defuse a border dispute.

Aid agencies report a big increase in refugees fleeing instability in North Kivu which is blamed on dissident general Nkunda.

2007 September – Major outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus.

2008 January – The government and rebel militia, including renegade Gen Nkunda, sign a peace pact aimed at ending years of conflict in the east.

Renewed clashes

2008 April – Army troops clash with Rwandan Hutu militias with whom they were formerly allied in eastern Congo, leaving thousands of people displaced.

2008 August – Heavy clashes erupt in the east of the country between army troops and fighters loyal to rebel leader Laurent Nkunda.

2008 October – Rebel forces capture major army base of Rumangabo; the Congolese government accuses Rwanda of backing General Nkunda, a claim Rwanda denies.

Thousands of people, including Congolese troops, flee as clashes in eastern DR Congo intensify. Chaos grips the provincial capital Goma as rebel forces advance. UN peacekeepers engage the rebels in an attempt to support Congolese troops.

2008 November – General Dieudonne Kayembe dismissed as armed forces chief over war in east. Replaced by navy chief General Didier Etumba Longomba.
******

The BBC timeline ends there, but I’m sure will soon be updated with the Christmas 2008 massacres. What will 2009 hold for the Democratic Republic of Congo? If all God’s people will get on their knees and pray and intercede for persecutions going on worldwide (this is just one of many), maybe we will see a radical change…

Technorati Tags: Lord’s Resistance Army, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo, DRC, persecuted church

Before You Go

Posted November 11th, 2008 by Jen in features, holidays, politics/world news
7 Comments »

Before You Go, a Tribute to our aging veterans.

For my Grandpa T., who served in WWI, and Uncle Doug who served in the Korean War.

Do you have friends or family members who have served in wars to protect our country and our national and individual freedoms? If so, be sure to thank them today. Perhaps a phone call, a letter, a small gift to convey your gratitude.

From our local Veteran’s Day Parade:

From my blog post from Veterans Day last year:

I remembered an old poem my mom wrote, and rummaged around this morning and thankfully found it. Her father was a WWI veteran. He spent the last decade of his life confined to a wheelchair, the result of mustard gas from the war. My grandpa died before I had the chance to meet him. But, thanks, Grandpa.

ODE TO VETERANS
by my mother

Have you survived the overflowing banks
of spring?
Tramped the long road of summer to the end?
Withstood the heartbreak and chill all
autumns bring?
Seen winter come, and still have breath to
spend?

Then I salute you, veteran of earth’s day.
You who have flown from dawn to set of sun.
Soon you will rise beyond the Milky Way
The toast of all in heaven, the long race won.

Also, you may want to look at my post on the Veterans History Project; here is an excerpt:

Would you like to participate in the Veterans History Project? The Library of Congress is collecting oral histories of veterans or civilians involved in war efforts. You can help by contributing a story or conducting an interview! With over 1,000 war veterans dying each day, the time is now to capture their stories and the valuable lessons to be learned from their personal accounts of their war experiences.

America, please honor your veterans. Remember. Give thanks. Understand that the freedoms we hold dear were paid for, and the price was very high.

Olympics open, Russia invades Georgia, I get breakfast in bed.

Posted August 8th, 2008 by Jen in china, family life, persecuted church, politics/world news
10 Comments »

Part I

It’s a landmark day. Today marks the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. Unlike any opening ceremony in Olympic history, China has outdone itself, and the sleeping giant awakens.

My niece, Karen, recently returned from China with her school band. The Catalina Foothills High School Marching Band (Tucson, Arizona) was chosen to perform in the 2008 pre-Olympic festivities in Beijing, and she was the most excited 16-year-old girl you could imagine. She plays clarinet and oboe, and did the U.S. proud.
You can read about the adventures of the Catalina Foothills High School band on their blog, and see if you can spot my niece. Here she is in this photo from a Peking Duck dinner, on the far right.

The band played atop the Great Wall of China, at the Juyong Pass, as well as a Forbidden City performance, along with tours of Tiananmen Square, the Summer Palace, the Peking Opera, the Temple of Heaven, the Beijing Zoo, and much more. I loved this photo of the driving hazards enroute to Beijing.

All in all, still not sure why the Olympics are being held in a country that practices infanticide, extreme censorship, communism, and very limited religious, political, or social freedom.

Part II

Moving across the continent to Eastern Europe, the news is anything but festive. Russia has invaded Georgia.

Reuters reports that Kakha Lamaia, a member of Georgia’s National Security Council, says that the two countries are “very close to war.” World powers around the globe are calling for an end to the violence, which is fierce and is escalating.

“If it’s not war, then we are very close to it,” Lamaia said. “The Russians have invaded Georgia and we are under attack.”

Immediately after President Bush and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin enjoyed the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, mentioned above, these two world leaders met to discuss the situation between Russia and Georgia–more specifically, a separatist territory of Georgia known as South Ossetia. Most South Ossetians hold Russian citizenship and have close ties to Russia. Russia is claiming there is ethnic cleansing going on in South Ossetia, and thus they need to come in and save the day.

My take is that Russia wants to take back part of its territory, once held for most of the two hundred years prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union. And they see an excuse to move in, with the unrest in South Ossetia. Russia is mad that Georgia has sought NATO membership–why should they care unless they feel that this move is in defiance of their rulership, and of course a threat to their security?

Still not sure why President Bush is convening with a dictator-on-the-rise like Vladimir Putin.

Part III

Proceeding along to the North American continent, the biggest news comes right out of my cozy home. I was served breakfast in bed, for no apparent reason, by my seven-year-old daughter.

I rolled over to a fried egg and a little voice that said, “Mommy, I made breakfast for you!” She served it up with a cup of coffee and a piece of toast, all to my utter surprise about where this flight of fancy originated. Never mind that the egg was over-easy and let me stress the “easy,” and the coffee was cold, its origins uncertain, the only option being the left-over coffee still in the pot from yesterday, which would explain the temperature. But the toast was excellent!

Not to settle for anything minimal, my daughter continued her morning homemaking. “Mommy, put on your best dress and come downstairs,” she called through the door. Curious as the mother hen that I am, I quickly complied, and entered the kitchen-converted-to-a-ballroom.

JJ had picked out some music, one of my old Amy Grant albums, and had created a festive atmosphere everywhere I turned. Surely this rivaled Beijing. Streamers were hanging from the ceiling, the table set with this unique combination of childhood and womanhood–fine wine glasses accompanied by paper plates and plastic silverware wrapped in crepe paper. I twirled and danced with my girls, and even my boys.

Apparently, the egg and toast were not enough, so she proceeded to make French Toast for the whole family (minus Dad, who was already gone to work).

I wrote out the instructions for her, and left to give her some space. I was called down in what seemed record time, and enjoyed a slightly soggy French Toast breakfast-after-breakfast. I silently noted the plastic bread bag melted to the side of the griddle, but she did turn it off when she was done. “Mommy,” she confidently declared, “I’m going to be a great cook when I grow up.” Yes, indeed, my dear.

Still not sure why I got so lucky as to have breakfast in bed for no reason at all.

photo credits: CFHS blog, FoxNews

Technorati Tags: children, children cooking, Olympics, China, Georgia, family life, Russia, Vladimir Putin, Catalina Foothills High School

German Homeschooling Ban Comes to Blog Talk Radio Tomorrow!

Posted July 20th, 2008 by Jen in education, germany, persecuted church, politics/world news
7 Comments »

If you’re following the crisis in Germany regarding that country’s ban on homeschooling, you may be interested in tuning in tomorrow to the new BlogTalkRadio Homeschool Show, live at 1 p.m. Central Time, Monday, July 21 (follow that link). You can listen to the archive after the show if you’re unavailable at that time.

This new Home School Talk radio show is hosted by Dana of Principled Discovery, who has written extensively about the homeschooling situation in Germany. The guest tomorrow is Rina, an Irish woman who homeschooled her children in Germany for a period and faced constant harassment from German authorities. Rina kept a blog updated through Dec. ’07 if you’d like to follow some of her saga there, as well as stories of many other German homeschoolers who dealt with similar harassment, fines, criminal penalties, loss of custody of children, and jail – just for homeschooling. Also a great source of updated information on German homeschooling is Kinderlehrer’s blog, Educating Germany, dedicated solely to this issue.

Whether you’re a homeschooler or not, I’d encourage anyone who cares about basic human rights, parental rights, educational choice, and living in a free and democratic society, to tune in and educate yourself on this issue. If you’re not able to listen live, but have a question, comment, or encouragement for Rina, consider emailing Dana with your thoughts to pass on to her guest.

Free Speech

Posted July 18th, 2008 by Jen in features, history, politics/world news, religion
14 Comments »

Some ramblings on free speech…pardon the lack of a cohesive statement. Today I’m thinking about the potency of the tongue, the desire of those who seek to censor it as a political power move, the double speak going on with regards to who should have free speech and who shouldn’t. This is not an academic piece of writing, so please, keep the lawyers away.

Inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech, The Four Freedoms, dated January 6, 1941, Norman Rockwell (who I wrote about here) painted a series of freedom paintings, the first of which was The Freedom of Speech. Here is that segment of FDR’s speech mentioning the four freedoms:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.

I think it no coincidence that freedom of speech and expression is at the top of his list. Certainly, with Hitler’s tyranny against the slightest criticism and silencing of all forms of expression but Naziism, and with WWII then raging, Roosevelt saw a need to aggressively defend this particular freedom.

The Guardian UK published an interesting timeline of the history of free speech a few years ago. Here are a few dates that caught my eye:

399BC Socrates speaks to jury at his trial: ‘If you offered to let me off this time on condition I am not any longer to speak my mind… I should say to you, “Men of Athens, I shall obey the Gods rather than you.”‘

1516 The Education of a Christian Prince by Erasmus. ‘In a free state, tongues too should be free.’

1770 Voltaire writes in a letter: ‘Monsieur l’abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.’

1859 ‘On Liberty’, an essay by the philosopher John Stuart Mill, argues for toleration and individuality. ‘If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.’

1929 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, of the US Supreme Court, outlines his belief in free speech: ‘The principle of free thought is not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate.’

1989 Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa against Salman Rushdie over the ‘blasphemous’ content of his novel, The Satanic Verses. The fatwa is lifted in 1998.

1992 In Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky points out: ‘Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favour of free speech, then you’re in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.’

Hate Crimes

Hate crimes, also known as bias motivated crimes, occur when the victim is targeted because of his membership in a certain group – racial, religious, gender, age, etc. I’m thinking of the lynching of African-Americans, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the Holocaust.

History of hate crimes legislation: The federal hate crimes statute (18 U.S.C. § 245) was originally created to protect civil rights workers in the 1960s. There were serious issues of violence regarding African-Americans enrolling in public schools, enjoying public establishments, travel issues, and more. This statute deals with racial, ethnic, national origin, and religious bias, and does not include sexual orientation. However, almost all states have much broader hate crimes legislation that does include sexual orientation.

The hype today is hate crime legislation targeting anti-gay sentiment. As far as assaults on gay people or destruction of property, or other violence toward homosexuals, there are already laws in place to deal with these crimes. So why is legislation being considered that criminalizes one’s moral or religious opposition to homosexuality? This clearly conflicts with the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. If someone is inciting others to violence with their speech, this is another issue, but anything less than that is simply criminalizing one’s thoughts. Is this America?

The expression of moral judgment is the right of a free person in a free society, whether one agrees with it or not. There are community standards and a consensus that help guide social mores, and clearly, there is not consensus on the homosexual issue.

In 2007 the House passed HR 1592 before it was put away by the Senate. This was an attempt at expanding federal hate crime legislation and will be back. I like what Congressman Ron Paul had to say about HR 1592 (emphasis mine):

May 7, 2007

Last week, the House of Representatives acted with disdain for the Constitution and individual liberty by passing HR 1592, a bill creating new federal programs to combat so-called “hate crimes.” The legislation defines a hate crime as an act of violence committed against an individual because of the victim’s race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Federal hate crime laws violate the Tenth Amendment’s limitations on federal power. Hate crime laws may also violate the First Amendment guaranteed freedom of speech and religion by criminalizing speech federal bureaucrats define as “hateful.”

There is no evidence that local governments are failing to apprehend and prosecute criminals motivated by prejudice, in comparison to the apprehension and conviction rates of other crimes. Therefore, new hate crime laws will not significantly reduce crime. Instead of increasing the effectiveness of law enforcement, hate crime laws undermine equal justice under the law by requiring law enforcement and judicial system officers to give priority to investigating and prosecuting hate crimes. Of course, all decent people should condemn criminal acts motivated by prejudice. But why should an assault victim be treated by the legal system as a second-class citizen because his assailant was motivated by greed instead of hate?

HR 1592, like all hate crime laws, imposes a longer sentence on a criminal motivated by hate than on someone who commits the same crime with a different motivation. Increasing sentences because of motivation goes beyond criminalizing acts; it makes it a crime to think certain thoughts. Criminalizing even the vilest hateful thoughts–as opposed to willful criminal acts–is inconsistent with a free society.

HR 1592 could lead to federal censorship of religious or political speech on the grounds that the speech incites hate. Hate crime laws have been used to silence free speech and even the free exercise of religion. For example, a Pennsylvania hate crime law has been used to prosecute peaceful religious demonstrators on the grounds that their public Bible readings could incite violence. One of HR 1592’s supporters admitted that this legislation could allow the government to silence a preacher if one of the preacher’s parishioners commits a hate crime. More evidence that hate crime laws lead to censorship came recently when one member of Congress suggested that the Federal Communications Commission ban hate speech from the airwaves.

Hate crime laws not only violate the First Amendment, they also violate the Tenth Amendment. Under the United States Constitution, there are only three federal crimes: piracy, treason, and counterfeiting. All other criminal matters are left to the individual states. Any federal legislation dealing with criminal matters not related to these three issues usurps state authority over criminal law and takes a step toward turning the states into mere administrative units of the federal government.

Because federal hate crime laws criminalize thoughts, they are incompatible with a free society. Fortunately, President Bush has pledged to veto HR 1592. Of course, I would vote to uphold the president’s veto.

McCain-Feingold

Have you ever wondered recently why Dr. Dobson won’t support John McCain for President? It’s partly because of the federal legislation that John McCain (R-AZ) pushed through in 2002, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, known as the McCain-Feingold Act. It basically restricted political free speech by placing new regulations on the financing of political campaigns – both in how much money can be raised and how and when groups can place political ads. For example, the Act requires advocacy groups to name their financial donors if they run ads within 60 days of a general election or within 30 days of a primary, if those ads were targeting candidates. In effect the McCain-Feingold Act limited the ability of groups like Focus on the Family to contact constituents about upcoming legislation.

George Will commented on it last November:

It was in 2002, when Congress was putting the final blemishes on the McCain-Feingold law that regulates and rations political speech by controlling the financing of it. The law’s ostensible purpose is to combat corruption or the appearance thereof. But by restricting the quantity and regulating the content and timing of political speech, the law serves incumbents, who are better known than most challengers, more able to raise money and uniquely able to use aspects of their offices — franked mail, legislative initiatives, C-SPAN, news conferences — for self-promotion.

Has anyone noticed how left-wing political speech (especially if you’re a Muslim) is protected and conservative political speech (especially if you’re a Christian) puts you in jail?

And did you notice how House Speaker Pelosi exercised her free speech to call President Bush a “total failure” yesterday (inciting and fueling hatred of America?), yet Pelosi referred to conservative talk-radio as “hate” radio and wants to bring back the Fairness Doctrine (effectively censors conservative opinion on TV and radio).

It’s only “hateful” speech if it’s anything under the sun the liberals disagree with; otherwise it’s “fairness.” Apparently only liberals/Muslims/gays/anybody-but-conservative-Christians deserve free speech (and deserve to hate).

Are you disturbed about infringements on free speech?

Technorati Tags: faith, McCain-Feingold, Nancy Pelosi, free speech, First Amendment, Four Freedoms, Norman Rockwel, hate speech, hate crimes, Ron Paul, Dr. Dobson, Focus on the Family

America: the good, the bad, and the ugly

Posted June 29th, 2008 by Jen in family life, holidays, humor, politics/world news, the ranch
19 Comments »

This next weekend ushers in the birthday of the United States of America! Here are a few word pictures from this past week from me, in small town America, 232 years and still going. I’ve included the good, the bad, and the ugly, but as you’ll see, in America, we take the good with the bad and roll with it, and even the ugly – well, it’s a free country and we can call ugly if we want.

Yesterday morning, at a local parade, celebrating that old west pastime called Rodeo, I was thrilled to see my friends’ Clydesdales in all their hugeness. This was GOOD.

And where else but Prineville could I find the Amazing Trash Can Marching Band? They dispose of garbage in step and in style. These guys were GOOD!

On to the BAD…look at the interesting mound I discovered on our property a few days ago.

Kids, do NOT jump in the pretty pile, because…take a closer look:

Ooowwww. These are some aggressive ants, and I’ve been scrambling to find out what they are. Most notably, they have a red head and body and a shiny black behind. At first glance, they look and act just like the Allegheny Mound Ants. Build enormous piles. Have red head/thorax and black abdomen. But those mostly live in the upper Midwest to the New England states and south to Georgia.

So, another possibility is the Red Imported Fire Ant (RIFA). They also build mounds. Also have red forebody and black abdomen. But they live mostly in the southeast, however a few California counties have been infested, and there’s been suspected infestations in Oregon. I’m supposed to immediately contact the Oregon Department of Agriculture if I think I have these RIFAs, because they are considered an invasive species, and a serious health risk to pets and children, not to mention the damage that can be done to crops and other native plant life.

A final suspect, perhaps the most likely, is the harvester ant. This is a common desert ant, which fits my habitat. Another aggressive mound-building ant. Someone wrote a whole thesis on the harvester ant and how it’s helpful in locating small artifacts in archaeological surveys. I think I’ll start digging for Paiute relics in this very spot.

The only issue I’m trying to resolve with the harvester ants is whether it’s likely for them to have a red head/thorax and a black rear. This is the only photograph from the Oregon high desert (or anywhere) I can find that fits what I see here on my property; the rest are all red or all black. Anyone?

I can’t live with these creatures. It’s summertime and they are seriously swarming. They inflict especially painful stings and bites. Enter the brave husband. With the poison. We are not poison-happy people, but there are limits to my consciousness.

Don’t worry, my pretties, there’s enough here for everyone. Take this to your egg laying machine MOMMY!! But here’s a small problem. I went back to the mound yesterday, expecting it to be very quiet. But no. More activity and seemingly more ants than ever. I re-poisoned the area, and I’ll check again later.

Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer or ruler, she prepares her food in summer and gathers her sustenance in harvest. How long will you lie there, O sluggard? Proverbs.

Enough of the BAD! But, remember, this is the United States, and I actually own this land of the mother-of-all-anthills (and have many ant poison options), God bless America!

Would you like to see the UGLY from small town America?

America is soooo great, that even our “ugly” isn’t that bad. Okay, that is not true, there are truly horrific things going on in America, just as there are around the world. We all need Jesus! But, with our great nation’s birthday upon us, I’d rather find a bit of humor, a bit of appreciation for our free country.

Isn’t it great that a local fruit stand can sell delicious, sweet oranges, ugly and all? Great value, free from government imposed pricing, grown on fruitful land in a country where one can actually be a land-owner, we are so fortunate. If you really want ugly, you can read this supposed celebrate-America-Fourth-of-July-but-really-just-leftist-propaganda editorial, for which this newspaper should be ashamed.

How about these berries? I feel some baking coming on. One aisle over from the ugly oranges, and as beautiful as they come.

In closing, I hope you enjoy this lovely song, one of my very favorites, from that incredible musician, Rich Mullins. Here in America.

Some of my favorite lyrics from this song:

“…Once I went to Appalachia, for my father he was born there, and I saw the mountains waking with the innocence of children…and the Holy King of Israel loves me here, in America!”

Do you have anything (good, bad, or ugly) to share from your slice of America?

God Bless the U.S.A.

Technorati Tags: fruit stand, ants, July 4th Parade, Crooked River Roundup, Fourth of July, Clydesdales, Rich Mullins, Here in America

Happy 60th Israel

Posted May 8th, 2008 by Jen in politics/world news
6 Comments »

May 8, 1948, Israel declared its independence. On May 14, Israel celebrates its official Independence Day. I support Israel.

Visit the Israel @ 60 information headquarters for events in Washington, D.C. and around the country.

Technorati Tags: Israel Independence, Israel

Religious Rights of Students in Public Education

Posted April 22nd, 2008 by Jen in education, politics/world news, religion
10 Comments »

A commenter made a good observation on my previous post about the case of the Wisconsin high school art student receiving a Zero and subsequent detentions for including in his landscape drawing a cross and the lettering “John 3:16.” The student, named as A.P. in a lawsuit against the school district, signed a policy the teacher presented at the beginning of the semester, which “prohibited any violence, blood, sexual connotations or religious beliefs in artwork.” Hmmm, placing religious beliefs alongside and seemingly on the level of violence, blood, and sexual connotations is interesting. Anyway, the comment was this:

Since when can a minor sign a legally binding contract without the consent of his legal parent/guardian?

Her question got me thinking. A minor can void a legal contract, true. The contract was not binding, but neither should it be meaningless. I don’t think it’s smart to be teaching kids that they can break contracts willy-nilly and be free of all responsibility. HOWEVER, this particular contract…oh boy.

This student should have carefully read the contract at the beginning of the class and raised a stink at that point – because on the face of the policy itself is a violation of student rights, as set forth in legal precedent (Tinker v. Des Moines Community School District (1969) which upheld the right of students to wear black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War).

Tinker held that the First Amendment did apply to public school students and teachers, and that regulation of student speech in the classroom would be allowed only if there was a constitutionally valid reason, like “substantial interference with school discipline or the rights of others.” A mere desire to avoid controversy is not a valid reason to suppress student expression.

Tinker has since been limited by other cases, with the scope of free speech not including indecent speech (Bethel School District v. Fraser) and with school newspapers being regulated (Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier). See also Perry Education Association v. Perry Local Educators Association and Morse v. Frederick.

Not only the Tinker case, but a document from the Department of Education, circulated in 2003 (Guidance on Constitutionally Protected Prayer in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools), makes it clear that students have a right to religious expression in the classroom. Here is the relevant portion from that D.O.E. document:

Religious Expression and Prayer in Class Assignments
Students may express their beliefs about religion in homework, artwork, and other written and oral assignments free from discrimination based on the religious content of their submissions. Such home and classroom work should be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance and against other legitimate pedagogical concerns identified by the school. Thus, if a teacher’s assignment involves writing a poem, the work of a student who submits a poem in the form of a prayer (for example, a psalm) should be judged on the basis of academic standards (such as literary quality) and neither penalized nor rewarded on account of its religious content.

The fact that this “contract” the student in Wisconsin signed was ever conceived and drafted shows not only the ignorance, but the bias, of this teacher/school.

There is a lesson here for all students and parents of students in public schools: Know your rights. Because it’s obvious that attempts will be made to violate and undermine your rights, often out of honest ignorance of the law and confusion among school leaders about the religious liberties of students. That Dept. of Education document is a good one to print out and go over carefully with your child. The prevailing anti-religious climate and the extreme, sometimes absurd, secularization of public life doesn’t appear to be letting up, so be on top of the issues and use favorable laws to your advantage while we have them.

Vigorously protect religious expression – this is a unique American principle. The point of the First Amendment is to prevent a state-sponsored religion, not to squash religious expression in American public life. It is unjust and unconstitutional to mandate that public schools be religion-free zones.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof … — Religious-liberty clauses, First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Technorati Tags: religious liberty, First Amendment, religious expression, U.S. Constitution, religious freedom, public school

Christ is Risen, Happy Easter!

Posted March 23rd, 2008 by Jen in persecuted church, politics/world news, religion
1 Comment »

Easter blessings to you all! Today I celebrate the reason I can live. Here is some wonderful news out of Italy, a Muslim converts to Christianity.

Italy’s most prominent Muslim commentator, a journalist with iconoclastic views such as support for Israel, converted to Roman Catholicism Saturday when the pope baptized him at an Easter service.

As a choir sang, Pope Benedict XVI poured holy water over Magdi Allam’s head and said a brief prayer in Latin.

“We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another,” Benedict said in a homily reflecting on the meaning of baptism. “Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close.”

An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Allam often writes on Muslim and Arab affairs and has infuriated some Muslims with his criticism of extremism and support for the Jewish state.

Allam also explained his decision to entitle a recent book “Viva Israel” or “Long Live Israel,” saying he wrote it after he received death threats from Hamas.

“Having been condemned to death, I have reflected a long time on the value of life. And I discovered that behind the origin of the ideology of hatred, violence and death is the discrimination against Israel. Everyone has the right to exist except for the Jewish state and its inhabitants,” he said. “Today, Israel is the paradigm of the right to life.”

I will pray for Allam, and many like him, who has already received death threats from Hamas, and he now faces additional danger, as converting from Islam is apostasy and punishable by death. Though killings are rare, Islamic legal doctrine does call for the death penalty for rejecting Islam.

Peace of Christ to you on this blessed Easter.

HT to Crunchy Con

Tags: Easter, Hamas, Israel, Magdi Allam, Muslim, Pope Benedict

Norman Rockwell: The People’s Painter

Posted February 24th, 2008 by Jen in arts & crafts, book reviews, features, history, politics/world news, product review
10 Comments »

Norman Rockwell is slowly emerging from his low rank among artists of the 20th century. An “illustrator” not an artist; a producer for mass publication not for the galleries; simple and poignant not highbrow or enigmatic. These are the condescensions that Rockwell had to live with during his lifetime and even now by the majority of art historians and critics.

However, passing time and a view through a lens clarified by our own humanity is providing a fresh take on Rockwell. Are we not in need of art that springs from sentimentality about American values? Is there not a desperate call to understand the dignity of the common man? Isn’t this a time to celebrate democracy and the individual? Do we not need hope for our nation in the face of economic and international uncertainties? The engaging power of Norman Rockwell paintings are for such a time as this.

If one judges Norman Rockwell by popular appeal, he has always been wildly successful. Though derided by the art world, he was embraced by the people. Though his storyteller style was out of fashion in the modern, abstract art establishment, Rockwell was clearly understood. Rockwell wrote in 1936:

The commonplaces of America are to me the richest subjects in art. Boys batting flies on vacant lots; little girls playing jacks on the front steps; old men plodding home at twilight, umbrellas in hand — all of these things arouse feeling in me. Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative.

Rockwell was born in 1894 in New York. He was a prolific painter, producing over 4000 original works. It’s fitting that one of his first jobs was art editor for the Boy Scouts of America, and Rockwell’s annual contributions to the Boy Scouts’ calendars between 1925 and 1976 have earned him a permanent place in the hearts of millions. Steven Spielberg has said that Rockwell’s scouting paintings inspired him to pursue his life’s work.

Norman Rockwell was best known for his Saturday Evening Post covers, of which he painted hundreds over a period of 47 years. Of these, there are four from 1943 that are among his most famous and influential works. The Four Freedoms series, published in 1943, was inspired by president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech in which he set forth four principles for universal rights: Freedom from Want, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, and Freedom from Fear. The wartime effect of the bold statements made by these powerful paintings cannot be underestimated.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH, Norman Rockwell

Lest we forget what American life was like in the 20th century, we have Rockwell. We can remember the best of America and the worst of America, but always with benevolent affection. The everyday happenings of everyday people were the subject of most of his work, painted with accuracy and an appealing sense of tradition.

Resources:
Norman Rockwell Museum
Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People
Norman Rockwell 2008 Calendar

Technorati Tags: art history, Boy Scout calendar, Norman Rockwel, Saturday Evening Post, The Four Freedoms

Art Heist: What’s Your Theory?

Posted February 12th, 2008 by Jen in arts & crafts, germany, politics/world news
5 Comments »

Artist: Claude Monet
Title: Poppy Field Near Vetheuil
Style: Impressionist
Year: 1879
Location: A white van, last seen speeding away from the Bührle Collection Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, on Feb. 10, 2008, possibly headed to a corrupt Saudi collector or other unsavory character.

The spectacular art heist of this past Sunday at the Bührle Museum in Zurich has rocked the art world, and police are working around the clock to solve the case and find any possible connections with other recent thefts, including the theft the previous week of two Pablo Picasso paintings stolen from a Swiss exhibition near Zurich. A note on the museum’s website says “The museum remains closed.”

“We’re talking about the biggest ever robbery carried out in Switzerland, even Europe,” Zurich police spokesman Mario Cortesi said.

The stolen art work has been valued at $180 million and comprised four Impressionist masterpieces: Poppies near Vetheuil by Claude Monet (1879), Count Lepic and his Daughters by Edgar Degas (1871), Blossoming Chestnut Branch by Vincent Van Gogh (1890) and Boy in a Red Waistcoat by Paul Cezanne (1888).

Since this month my blog features have been about great artists, and the first artist I covered was Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, this breaking news certainly caught my attention. The Bührle Museum did have a Renoir on display, Little Irene, but it wasn’t touched, probably because the three masked gunmen couldn’t carry anymore heavy paintings, and the robbers appeared to have just taken the first four they came to.

Motive? I mean, you can’t go out and sell the famous stolen art. “It’s extremely hard, if not impossible, to sell these works,” said Michaela Derra of Ketterer Kunst GmbH, a Munich, Germany-based purveyor of modern and contemporary art. Here is a speculation:

Steve Thomas, head of art law at Irell & Manella LLP’s Los Angeles office, said it was unlikely the robbery was commissioned by a private collector looking to stash art in a secret location.

He thought the motive most likely would be an insurance ransom, a reward or leverage for someone who could be facing prosecution for even bigger crimes.

However, I have my own little theory. There is apparently a Saudi collector sending his thugs out to steal art for his private collection. None of the current stories I’ve found on the Bührle theft have mentioned this connection, so I could be promoting an absurd idea. Nonetheless, just two months ago, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, paintings by Picasso and Portinari were stolen, but recovered. One of the suspects in the case told detectives the paintings were to be delivered to a Saudi collector, who has not been publicly named by authorities.

The history of Mr. Emil G. Bührle is very interesting, and perhaps he himself was a collector who obtained stolen art, and conceivably everything has come full circle. Bührle, born in Germany, was an industry tycoon who provided weapons to the Third Reich during World War II. In the aftermath of the war, he amassed one of Europe’s most valuable collections of art. It’s a tragedy of the war that the Nazis looted much of the great art owned by Jews, and many of Bührle’s pieces were on a “looted art list.” Exactly how Bührle obtained his collection is unknown, but some of it is “flight art,” works smuggled out by Jews and sold at bargain-basement prices to avoid confiscation by Nazis.

Maybe this art heist was Jews taking back their rightful property, via a Saudi collector, who will ask for a ransom. At this point, any theory can be thrown into the ring.

Electoral Compass: What’s Your Position?

Posted January 18th, 2008 by Jen in politics/world news
4 Comments »

My sister just emailed me a link to Electoral Compass – it’s a very handy quiz, with only 36 questions, to analyze how you align with each political candidate for the U.S. Presidential Election of 2008. Respond to each query, and voila, who you’re voting for is settled! No more undecided voters.

Of course, it’s not quite as simple as a quiz. I’m a strong Mike Huckabee supporter, but the final report told me I’m closest to John McCain and furthest from Barack Obama (I would have guessed Hillary Clinton). You have to keep in mind that you may place more weight on a particular matter, while the quiz will give equal weight to all.

The issues covered in the questions are: gun control, environment, Iraq, economy, income, national security, family, immigration, health care, law and order, education, and terrorism. A very nice feature of the quiz is that at the end, you may compare each of the candidates with your answers. An even nicer feature are the links provided on every issue for each candidate, linking to the various sources that are the basis of the quiz, such as debate transcripts, candidates’ websites, and other news sources.

Strangely enough, it looks like this quiz was created by someone in the Netherlands.

No guns, oh, and no free speech on public transit

Posted January 1st, 2008 by Jen in education, politics/world news, religion
5 Comments »

The Texas woman who was kicked off the Forth Worth, Texas public transportation system “T” bus this past Saturday – was she concealing a weapon, endangering passengers with violent behavior, or selling drugs? No, she was reading her Bible to her children, enroute to church.

Public Transportation is rife with problems. Last April in St. Paul, Minnesota, the city saw a 16 year old shot and killed while a passenger on the Metro Transit bus. In November, a 71 year old man was brutally beaten with a baseball bat in Gresham, Oregon by a 15 year old gang member at the MAX public transit station. Just two weeks ago in Baltimore, a 14 year old boy was shot and wounded on a Maryland Transit bus. And here’s just two paragraphs from the Baltimore Sun article to give you a taste of the real problems facing public transportation in major cities:

On Dec. 4, a 26-year-old woman was severely injured in a daytime attack in Hampden, beaten and kicked by a group of middle-school students on the No. 27 bus. Nine juveniles were arrested.

The next week, two passengers on a No. 64 bus in Brooklyn were attacked by a group of five men. On Dec. 18 two juveniles were arrested after a girl was stabbed in the arm on a No. 51 bus near Mondawmin Mall.

So don’t give me this flap about a lady reading the Bible on the bus. Is there nothing more interesting happening in Fort Worth, and the terribly bored bus drivers must resort to throwing off Bible reading mothers?

According to MyFox Dallas-Fort Worth, the woman kicked off the bus, Christine Lutz, sees this as a clear case of religious persecution. Lutz told FOX 4 that she was sitting in the back of the bus, not being disruptive, and reading to her children from the Bible. She said she was stunned when the bus driver asked her to stop reading her Bible. Lutz responded, “No, I’m reading the Bible, I’m teaching the kids, I’m going to continue.” Before she knew it, the bus had pulled over, and she and her kids were escorted into a supervisor’s van and driven the remainder of the way to church.

Now, as a homeschooling mom, I’m quite familiar with teaching on the go. In the van on the way to Cub Scouts, along the grocery aisles, in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, in line at the Post Office. I’m always teaching, reading the kids a story, answering questions. When dealing with children, animation is often required. I’ve surely annoyed some people along the way. However, the person waiting in line behind me to get his package shipped has no constitutional right to not be annoyed by my teaching. And I have a right to free speech. So does the obnoxious person shipping that package talking at full volume on his cell phone. So does the mother reading the Bible to her children on the public transit system.

Officials at the Fort Worth T (Trinity Railway Express) claim that their treatment of Lutz had nothing to do with the content of what she was reading, but that she was simply too loud. They point to signs on the bus warning against playing radios and loud behavior. “If she were reading Moby Dick or reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or reading anything else, the same thing would have occurred,” said bus representative Joan Hunter. Really, Joan, does everyone sit in complete silence on the Fort Worth T? Perhaps I’ll try riding the T and read Winnie the Pooh to my children and see if I get thrown off.

Given that not a single passenger had complained, this story is pretty weak. Given the real, bona fide problems facing mass transit systems in large cities, like thieves, gangs, and drug dealers, it’s clear to this blogger that the bus driver was in fact engaging in a form of religious persecution. Or maybe just an extremely low annoyance tolerance level. This woman deserves the public apology she is seeking.

Anything for a Vote

Posted December 7th, 2007 by Jen in family life, politics/world news
6 Comments »

I was listening to NPR the other day, and heard about “Caucus! The Musical,” a lighthearted musical comedy highlighting Iowa’s crucial role in the frenzied presidential nomination process. One of the songs was aired, “Anything for a Vote,” and here the creator of “Caucus!”, Robert John Ford, gives us a hilarious and irreverent view of a politician’s campaigning. Here’s a taste:

I remember back in ’84 ,
I went to open up my door
And there stood Walter
Mondale in my yard.
He’d been there since the break of dawn,
That’s when he’d mowed and raked my lawn
And walked and fed my lazy St. Bernard.

If you live in Iowa and get a chance to see one of their shows, it sounds like you’re in for a treat.”Caucus! The Musical” premieres at the State Historical Museum Theatre in Des Moines December 27, 2007 through January 13, 2008.

And apparently, your own Diary of 1 will do anything for a vote, too! It seems I’ve been nominated for a Homeschool Blog Award, in particular, the Best Cyber-Buddy Blog Award. So, I raced right out and paid a personal visit to a blogger! Okay, it was quite coincidental, but still, I find humor in this!

Last weekend, I found myself at the Portland Airport, and my niece’s flight was delayed several hours, so I ended up not being able to drive back over the mountain that night. As I sat waiting, I was thankful I had brought my laptop, and got some work done. AND, I shot off an email to Mrs. Darling, who I happened to know lived in the area. She is a great bloggy friend, and I hesitated only a moment before clicking “send,” thinking, she won’t mind. I gave her my cell phone number, and said, hey, I’m stuck in Portland for a while, would you mind a visitor?!

Sure enough, just before my niece’s plane rolled in, my phone rang. Mrs. D. and I made arrangements, and she was not a bit nervous giving her address to a complete stranger! Only, we’re really not strangers, as we discovered. We’ve corresponded enough through blog and email that when we finally sat down for a long visit, if was as if with an old friend.

I’m sure all of Mrs. Darling’s other blog friends are quite jealous! She always has long lists of visitors, and I can assure them all that Mrs. D. is truly just as she presents herself. For having a drop-in visitor, her house was immaculate, she quickly prepared some delicious hors d’oeuvres and coffee, and she set aside her other plans for her surprise guest. I was honored. Now, Mrs. D. should really get an award for her amazing hospitality.

Yesterday in History: Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan

Posted November 17th, 2007 by Jen in politics/world news
4 Comments »

Yesterday I wanted to write about “This Day in History.” I didn’t have time…do you ever have a great idea for a blog post, do a bit of research, then, poof, your time is gone and there are real-life obligations to tend to? So, just to give you my Reader’s Digest condensed version of yesterday’s This Day in History, here it is.

November 16 – On this day in 1988, Benazir Bhutto was elected as the Prime Minister of Pakistan, the first woman, and at age 35 the youngest person in modern times, to be head of the government of a Muslim-majority state.

I find her story fascinating and intriguing. And she’s baaack. She’s so beautiful and well-spoken, and I so want to believe her when she says she’s returning to bring democracy to Pakistan. But I can’t get past her sordid history of massive corruption charges and ties to the very terrorists she denounces.

Benazir Bhutto has attended Radcliffe, Harvard, and Oxford. Her father was a former Prime Minister who was executed for conspiracy to murder the father of a dissident politician. Two of her brothers were murdered. She has been under house arrest, lived in exile, and survived an assassination attempt. How can you not be curious about this enigmatic woman?

Since November 3, 2007, there has been a “State of Emergency” in Pakistan, as Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suspended the constitution and imposed martial law, citing dangers of religious extremism, terrorism, and an interfering judiciary. Bhutto immediately interrupted a visit to family in Dubai (Grace, have you seen her around? :-) ) and returned to Pakistan.

Initial talks of power-sharing between Bhutto and Musharraf have broken down. Yesterday, Benazir Bhutto said she would not talk to Pervez Musharraf on any issue, but will continue her struggle against dictatorship in Pakistan and seek to restore democracy. Bhutto’s recent comments:

When martial law was imposed and constitution was torn apart, I decided to discontinue the talks. …Life is very precious and gift of Allah. It should not and cannot be wasted but when my country is in danger, when my countrymen are in danger, when there is no rule of law, when extremists are gaining ground, I am ready to risk my life.

I hope you’re able to follow a bit of the news coming out of Pakistan. I think the Pakistani situation has great bearing on the future of Middle East stability and the war on terror, which ultimately has a direct and terrifying bearing on the the United States. Bhutto now presents herself as the opposition leader, with probable elections in January. Hmmm, read this before you decide what you think.

Deals with the Devil

Posted August 14th, 2007 by Jen in politics/world news, religion
4 Comments »

The Taliban released two female hostages on Monday, the Korea Times reported. There remain 19 South Korean hostages, 16 of whom are women. The Taliban have backed off somewhat on their demand for a prisoner swap, now demanding ransom – a total of around $10 million for the surviving South Koreans.

Supposedly, this release was a “gesture of goodwill” according to a Taliban spokesman. However, an unnamed source says the two hostages were freed for ransom, after direct negotiations between the government of South Korea and the Taliban.

I welcome the release of the two women, and praise God for this unfolding of events. However…

Is it right to make deals with the devil? I’ve been grappling with this issue of giving in to the demands of the Taliban. Every compassionate person in the world wants these hostages released. But what is the real price? It’s not $10 million and it’s not eight Taliban fighters being released. It’s a strengthened force of evil that gets more powerful every time it is fed through compromise.

I had to ask that question, WWJD? I found an answer of sorts in these scriptures. Mark 1:12-13; Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-15; John 1:19-2:25. These are the biblical accounts of Jesus facing the Devil in the wilderness. Jesus had been fasting for forty days and forty nights and he was hungry, as any man would be. The Devil came and tempted him with several deals. In exchange for Jesus dealing with the Devil in some way or another, and giving the Devil either legitimacy or worship, Jesus could have bread to eat, personal safety, or all the power in the world.

Jesus was in an extremely difficult position and was offered a variety of tempting compromises by the Devil. So I decided I could attempt a comparison here. In my little analogy, Jesus will be the Christian South Koreans and their advocates, and the Devil will be the Taliban. So the Taliban Devil comes to the South Korean Christian advocates, which group is also in an extremely difficult position, and begins to offer deals. The heart of the deals is a demand to recognize me, worship me, which is what the Devil really wants.

If the South Korean Christian advocates would respond as Jesus, they would first say, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” In other words, being held hostage, when offered freedom (bread) at the cost of bowing to the demands of the Devil, they should decline, believing that their life and freedom comes from the mouth of God.

Next, when the South Korean Christian advocates are guaranteed their personal safety as Jesus was (throw Yourself down and the angels will catch you, quoting scripture), they should respond, “You shall not put the Lord Your God to the test.” In other words, when the Taliban Devil begins to talk as if he is a genuine and sanctioned authority who knows the language of negotiation, do not be fooled.

And finally, when the Taliban Devil says I will give you all the hostages if you give me $10 Million (fall down and worship me), then the response of the South Korean Christian advocates should be “Go, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord Your God, and serve Him only.’”

And what do you think would happen if the South Korean Christian advocates responded as Jesus did and refused to deal with the Devil? Would everything fall apart, would everyone die, would there be ruin?

No, I believe that we would have the same ending as given in Matthew 4:11: “Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him.”

photo credits: Korea Times

Taliban Murderers

Posted August 1st, 2007 by Jen in politics/world news
6 Comments »

I noticed a CNN story from July 22, in which a Taliban spokesman said that talks with South Korea over the fate of the 23 volunteer [Christian] aid workers were progressing well, and “the situation will be solved peacefully.” These South Korean Christian aid workers were seized by Taliban forces on July 18, while travelling from Kandahar to the Afghan capital of Kabul.

Well, the Taliban has murdered two of the hostages so far – as of Aug. 1, 2007, 10:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. The latest Taliban deadline has passed. My prayers go out to the families of Rev. Bae Hyung-kyu and Shim Sung-min.

Why, again, is any government negotiating with lying, murderous madmen?

I am on my knees praying for my brothers and sisters in Christ, who are being persecuted. Please join me.

The Afghan army has dropped leaflets in the Ghazni area where the hostages are being held, warning area residents of an impending military mission. I can only pray for God-speed, a successful mission, the saving of the South Korean Christians, and the destruction of the Taliban.

But under no circumstances should any of the governments or groups involved bow to the requests of the Taliban. No exchange of militant Taliban prisoners for the South Korean hostages. Giving in to the demands of terrorists only invites more terrorism. This is so very difficult, I know. The humanitarian loss is crushing. If my son or daughter were among the hostages…I am sure my emotions would cloud my opinions.

South Koreans are appealing directly to the United States for help in negotiating some kind of deal with the Taliban. Earlier this year, such a deal was worked out when the Afghan government negotiated an exchange of five Taliban prisoners for an Italian journalist who was taken hostage. The U.S. government is standing strong against those kinds of concessions, maintaining that this just increases the likelihood of future hostage-taking.

There is a gathering of South Korean families at the U.S. Embassy today. These families of the hostages are angry….at the United States. One young man carries a sign that says “Bush, talk to the Taleban.” And why is this situation the fault of the United States? Yes, we led the multinational force that brought down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of September 11. Does that mean the U.S. is responsible for the acts of every madman in the region? No, it’s just nice to have someone else to blame, somewhere else to direct your anger.

photo credits: Reuters

Growing up on Rt. 666: Immigration Reform and Border Security

Posted June 15th, 2007 by Jen in politics/world news
5 Comments »

Just give me some border security, and the only other thing I ask is for Mexico to clean up the homeland a sufficient amount so their natives will remain there and enjoy their own beloved country.

I grew up on Route 666, the Devil’s Highway (thank the good Lord it’s since been renamed to U.S. Route 491). Rt. 666 ended in Douglas, Arizona, bordering Agua Prieta, in Sonora, Mexico. My three older sisters attended the local high school in Douglas, and praise God I got out of that hell-hole after 8th grade before I had to go there.

I remember in 1990 when U.S. Customs officials discovered the most sophisticated underground concrete tunnel between Agua Prieta and Douglas…responsible for the trafficking of many thousands of tons of cocaine and marijuana into the U.S., right down Rt. 666. I was gone by then, but not at all surprised by this discovery.

Back then, Rt. 666 was perhaps the greatest drug trafficking avenue from Mexico. We couldn’t put a stop to it then, and look where it’s got us. The drug cartel activity is reaching desperate proportions – do you recall the Cananea shootings last month? Just southeast of Nogales, AZ, nearly spilling over into border towns, were 50 out of control Mexican drug hit men, killing police officers and others who were targeted for betraying an agreement with a drug cartel.

My childhood crush was Ernesto Hermosillo, the cutest Mexican boy I knew, and the kindest and smartest boy altogether. I can honestly say I survived living in Cochise County, Arizona without a trace of racist attitude toward Mexicans, despite my incredibly racist father who rambled on about the “damned wetbacks” and refused to let me play with Marianne, the only black girl in the entire county. Maybe it was because we were so dirt poor (I literally lived in a shack with a dirt floor, until it was upgraded to concrete way before this was fashionable) that Ernie’s quonset hut looked really nice next to my shack.

So, the piece of immigration reform now on the table that relates to border security…that’s what I’m interested in. I have absolutely nothing against good Mexican people, and I still love Ernie, wherever he is, but I want legality, I want safety, I want zero tolerance for drug trafficking Mexican cartel thugs.

As my husband and I were just discussing this issue of immigration, he said the heart of the matter is really wages. We make all the illegals legal, and we suddenly have to pay them a fair wage. Can our country handle that? I said, why can’t Mexico just reform their country enough to make it nice enough to not want to leave it? Ah, here is the real issue. Mexico is corrupt. Too corrupt to reform its country.

We philosophized about why this is. To us, the answer is obvious. Nations that forget God will fail. We named several countries off the top of our heads that are corrupt and riddled with unsurmountable problems, that have forgotten God. African nations, China, Russia, Latin America, ….

Back to immigration reform and border security. There appears to be no immediate chance for Mexico to undergo an overnight no-corruption makeover. Do we want children of a corrupt father spilling over the borders? I don’t know, I had a corrupt father but does that make me corrupt? Do I want secure borders? Absolutely, and I’ll pay the price for it. If the Hermosillos are locked out, along with the drug lords, so be it. The current immigration bill would commit the most resources to border security in U.S. history, and that gets my vote. Rt. 666 has a new name, let’s give it a new image.

Melissa’s Birthday Cake

Posted April 24th, 2007 by Jen in education, family life, politics/world news
9 Comments »

I promised to post a picture of our birthday cake for Melissa, and here it is! Sixteen candles, and I hope it was truly a sweet sixteen after such an ordeal. Melissa, you are a brave young lady, and your courage in this trial has been remarkable. God has surely been with you. Praise His Name! We are not letting up in our prayers, however, for your family or the many other persecuted ones.

And I couldn’t resist showing some pictures of the aftermath of lighting the candles. My kids had such fun–but they do understand why we celebrated with this cake today. My 5 year old daughter, who wasn’t completely solid on the details, told her grandma the cake was for “Melissa, who turned 16 and escaped from jail.” But as you may know, Melissa herself stated that her time in the psychiatric ward was “like a prison.”

Almost better than the cake itself are the rituals of blowing out the candles and then licking the frosting off the candles. With three or more children blowing at once, the task is accomplished in an instant. I had to shoot fast to get this on camera. And hey, we’re all family here, so a little spit on the cake is no matter.

I’ve emailed my cake picture to: falumafischer@aol.com – and if you have a picture, get it on over there, and be sure to post here to let me see it, too! This “Birthday Action” for Melissa is a small token of love to her, and this project will culminate with a special album to be given to Melissa, including all of the photos which are submitted. The pictures will soon be posted on Bildungsinitiative Zukunft.

Oh, if you could have seen these kids double-dipping their candles into the white fluffy frosting! Personally, I find the frosting revolting, and have always, even as a child, scraped it right off! And whenever I can get away with it, I prepare our cakes sans frosting.

Melissa, we feasted on your cake, and we speak blessings over you this day.

Welcome Home, Melissa and Happy Birthday!

Posted April 23rd, 2007 by Jen in education, politics/world news
5 Comments »

Wow, I was so thrilled to read the news that Melissa Busekros is now back home with her family in Erlangen, Germany! Today is her 16th birthday, giving her some rights that she previously did not possess. The Youth Welfare Office should no longer have any authority over her.

We have been praying, with thousands of others, for this outcome. We continue to pray for the many other German homeschooling families still being persecuted. I wonder what the situation would look like if Melissa were say, only 13 years old? Would that mean three more years in confinement away from her family?

There are efforts underway by several groups within Germany to push for education reform and the reversal of the law making homeschooling illegal. The Kolloquium being held this weekend in Germany (April 27-29), hosted by Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit, is the second annual International Colloquim on Home Education, the goal being freedom of choice in education. If you’d like to make a contribution to this cause, that’s a practical way to give assistance. Most people I know are ignorant of the gravity of this situation. Please investigate.

Dana reports that a “Birthday Action” is planned on behalf of Melissa. The idea is to light 16 candles (on a cake? or not) and take a picture – send it to falumafischer@aol.com. The goal is for 123 families to take part, so a total of 1,968 candles may be lit, one for each hour Melissa has been held hostage by the state. The pictures will then be posted here. I’ll post my picture later today!

For some other ideas on actions you can take, visit Kinderlehrer’s site, and browse through her posts on who to appeal to in the government, and ideas for letters to write, among other particulars.

Another interesting action to look into is the possibility of providing asylum to German families who are fleeing the country or going into hiding to avoid the tragedy of Melissa – their children being stolen away. An article I read recently quoted Home School Legal Defense Association co-founder, Michael Farris as saying:

Most homeschoolers have concluded when the family courts begin to get involved, their only realistic opportunity is to seek asylum in another country. You don’t expect to apply for political asylum from a Western democracy but that’s what’s happening and with greater frequency.

The philosophy that the government knows best how to raise children is really becoming a worldwide phenomenon. I think Germany represents the edge of the night that’s coming.

I was wondering, and perhaps someone out there can inform me — is there a need for people to be offering asylum? Here in America, how would one go about offering asylum? Would German families even want to come here? Legally, does the United States grant asylum to individuals wanting to escape a fellow “democratic” nation? Just thinking.

UPDATE: See Dana’s update regarding the startling details of of Melissa’s return home. A refusal by the Youth Welfare Office to allow Melissa to visit her parents for her birthday led her to climb out her foster family’s window at 3 a.m. and make her way home! Expect some further action here. She apparently has not yet been discharged from the foster care system, and the Youth Welfare Office is saying they will carefully consider further steps “in the interests of the child.” If their consideration of the best interest of Melissa is the guiding light here, expect more travesty of justice.

Bonhoeffer executed today in 1945

Posted April 9th, 2007 by Jen in general, germany, persecuted church, politics/world news
6 Comments »

Monday, April 9 – today’s date – in 1945, was the morning of the hanging of Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the Flossenburg Concentration Camp. German pastor, writer, dissident, and martyr. A great force behind the German Resistance to Hitler’s Nazi regime. Sadly, ironically, but perhaps most profound, is the fact that just a few days later, Allied troops liberated the camp. Three weeks following, Adolf Hitler had committed suicide, and within a month, Germany had surrendered unconditionally. But I believe that Bonhoeffer speaks to us through his sacrifice more clearly today than he did in his life.

I was in my early 20s when I was given Bonhoeffer’s great book, The Cost of Discipleship, which he wrote in 1937 – quite prophetically, I must say, as he paid the ultimate price. “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,” said Bonhoeffer.

Just as a prophet is not accepted in his own town (Matthew 13:57), Bonhoeffer was speaking so far ahead of his time that I believe most of his contemporaries benefited little from his life. Many of his fellow pastors and churchpeople supported Hitler’s policies. The true beneficiaries of Dietrich Bonhoeffer are those of us living today.

As he explained his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler, Bonhoeffer said: “If I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.” A further glimpse into the action-oriented Bonhoeffer was his collaboration in an effort to help a group of Jews escape to Switzerland that led to his arrest and imprisonment in April 1943, two years prior to his execution.

So, I’m trying to lay the framework of all of this history onto life today. Here’s a Bonhoeffer quote that helps his death bring some benefit to me today: “Nothing is fixed, and nothing holds us. The film, vanishing from memory as soon as it ends, symbolizes the profound amnesia of our time. Events of world-historical significance, along with the most terrible crimes, leave no trace behind in the forgetful soul.”

Can we please not suffer from profound amnesia? Can we please not be illiterate regarding church history? Bonhoeffer displayed the most admirable resistance to tyranny you can hope for; yet this was too late for his own age – we are the recipients, and our call is to respond to the conditions that make tyranny possible. We are offered the opportunity, if we would educated ourselves with this history, to direct action at the root of the problem, instead of being forced into a violent struggle with the full-blown fuhrer.

So, The Cost of Discipleship teaches me that believing in Jesus isn’t enough – there is a call to action, and Bonhoeffer sets a real-life example of sometimes radical action. Bonhoeffer warns against the “cheap grace” that advocates belief without obedience. “Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. It remains an abstract idea, a myth.”

Here are some issues I’ll be exploring in more detail in another post – this is an excerpt from the 2003 documentary film, Bonhoeffer:

The church has three possible ways it can act against the state. First, it can ask the state if its actions are legitimate. Second, it can aid the victims of the state action. The church has the unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society even if they do not belong to the Christian society. The third possibility is not just [to] bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself.

Do you think the church has any reason today to act against the state? Ahh, now we’re getting to the heart of this, and we must examine this closer if Bonhoeffer’s martyrdom is to have been of any profit.

Britons back home, Happy Easter! But why?

Posted April 5th, 2007 by Jen in politics/world news
1 Comment »

Billed as an Easter gift, the Iranian government released the 15 British sailors and marines, and they have arrived on their beloved home soil in time for Good Friday services and the Easter celebration. When I heard the news of the release yesterday, I was overwhelmed with relief, but suspicion crept in.

An Associated Press story today said the release is largely credited to the pragmatic conservatives like Ali Larijani, Iran’s top foreign policy negotiator (and also its chief nuclear negotiator). Well, with “pragmatic” being defined with synonyms like “sensible” and “practical,” one would be hopeful.

But pragmatic is hardly a word I would use in the same sentence as Larijani, a former Revolutionary Guard officer who thinks the Holocaust is a myth and calls for Israel to be “wiped from the map.” Not to mention unqualified refusal to freeze uranium enrichment.

Maybe he’s pragmatic in comparison to Iran’s hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who would like to see the U.S. as well as Israel wiped from the map. It’s like saying that when compared to jumping off a 300 foot cliff onto rocks, jumping off a 200 foot cliff onto rocks is very sensible.

So why the release of the Britons? I honestly don’t know, but I highly doubt that pragmatism is the answer. This is pure political maneuvering, propaganda at its best.

Iran has an aggressive nuclear program, and of course the release of these British sailors and marines raised hopes for Iranian compromises on its nuclear program, as stated in the A.P. story. There is no compromise with madmen. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned, “If the synagogues are set on fire today, it will be the churches that will be burned tomorrow.”

photo credits: AP and Reuters

Scopes in reverse

Posted March 26th, 2007 by Jen in education, politics/world news, religion, science
5 Comments »

Here in my pretty part of the world, I read a very ugly story in my local paper last week. The Bend Bulletin’s front page story on March 20 was titled “Sisters fires a new teacher for presenting creationism.” The posh little town of Sisters, Oregon has a great quilt show in July, the most kickin’ rodeo around, the most exceptional coffee house in the world, and a really bovine school board.

So, this firing happened a week ago, and I wasn’t going to write about it, because I didn’t want to get completely worked up…but, I will anyway. The reporting was not accurate. But I should add that a follow-up article was helpful in understanding Mr. Helphinstine’s presentation. Kris was not teaching creationism. He has a master’s degree in science from Oregon State University, and obviously knows what evolution is; as far as Creationism, he said “I know what it is, and I went out of my way not to teach it.” He reiterated in a phone interview with The Bulletin that he did not teach the concept of God creating the world, but rather included some supplemental materials to teach the students how to discern bias. “My whole purpose was to give accurate information and to get them thinking.” The headline should have read, “Sisters fires a new teacher for presenting critical thinking.”

Pebble Chaser has covered this superbly, so I won’t go into the whole terrible ordeal; go see what Heidi said.

I did just want to add that I found it incredibly ironic that a brief glance back in history shows that the Butler Act, 1925, prohibited teachers from teaching anything but the Divine Creation of man as set forth in the Bible, and specifically banned teaching that man was descended from a lower order of animals. (Of course, the ridiculous publicity stunt of the Scopes trial changed that.) But here we are, just 80 some years later, and those same teachers are prohibited from teaching anything but that man was descended from a lower order of animals.

photo by: Gary Albertson
**********
To comment, click on title above, go to bottom of post and comment.

Stop the world, I want to get off!

Posted March 22nd, 2007 by Jen in education, politics/world news
3 Comments »

And what of the new German case of the Brause family?! What in the world? Two parents with college degrees, a judge who acknowledges the children are “well-educated,” yet the court has taken custody of the five children away from their homeschooling parents (though not yet removed from the home)…The crime, again, is not providing the children with a public school education. (Just in case you haven’t been following, homeschooling is illegal in Germany.) The fears of the International Human Rights Group, and so many others, have come true. The German state has been emboldened by the court’s decision in the Busekros case, and continues to TERRORIZE homeschool families.

What planet am I on? “Stop the world, I want to get off!” When I read of the Brause case, on the heels of the Busekros tragedy, I immediately thought of Randy Stonehill’s song, “Stop the World.”

STOP THE WORLD
Well it’s okay to murder babies
But we really ought to save the whales
We’re putting crimials in office
Cause it’s way too crowded in the jails
T.V. is our teacher now
The schools are overrun by thugs
And children skip their innocence
and graduate to sex and drugs
Right is wrong and wrong is right
White is black and black is white
I think I just lost my appetite
Stop the world I want to get off

Stop the world
I want to get off
This is too weird for me
Stop the world
I want to get off
I get the defininte impression
That this isn’t how it’s meant to be

No, no

Written By Randy Stonehill
© Copyright 1984 by Stonehillian Music &
Word Music (a division of Word, Inc.)

and there are several other verses, but I had to add my own verse here, if that’s okay, Randy.

In Germany you can prosti*ute
but don’t dare teach your kids at home
The state will put them in a psych ward
and rally up the Reich in case you roam
Parents are breeding machines
They seem to have no human rights
All German children are public domain
Oh, pray for families with sleepless nights.
Right is wrong and wrong is right
White is black and black is white
I think I just lost my appetite
Stop the world I want to get off

Well, I think I’ll go throw up now. I certainly can’t sleep after thinking about this.
***************

If you want to comment, click on the title above, go to the bottom of this post and comment.

In Him we live and move and have our being

Posted March 20th, 2007 by Jen in education, poetry, politics/world news, religion
10 Comments »

I thought I’d take the Apostle Paul’s tactic with Athens, and quote some poetry for Germany.

Around A.D. 50, Paul went to preach in Athens, then eminently famous for learning, philosophy, and fine arts. And godless idolatry. The Athenians actually had an altar with the inscription, “To the unknown god,” just in case they missed one in all their god-worshipping.

Paul loved these people, and in an effort to teach them the truth about the Creator and the need to worship Him alone, Paul reached out to them with the words of one of their own poets, Epimenides (c. 600 B.C.), and said, “For in him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28. These words speak to humanity’s complete dependence on God, not an image, a philosophy, or human hands.

So, on to Germany…I must say I was inspired by commenter John’s post at Principled Discovery. Regarding the German homeschool case of Melissa Busekros, which I’ve written about here and here, John gave a historical context of the intellectual elitist mentality in Germany:

Many people do not realize that prior to what took place in the late 1930′s and early to mid 1940′s Germany had become the most intellectual and erudite nation on the planet. It is this very mentality that spawned the horrible dilemma of WW2 and the Holocaust that is now part of our World history.

Germany reminds me of Athens, I must say. Intellectual, erudite…And John ended his comment with these words: Every civilization that has forgotten God has failed.

Well, the Apostle Paul was probably the greatest teacher and most successful evangelizer of all time (besides Jesus), and if he quotes Athenian poetry to Athenians, I can’t go wrong quoting German poetry to Germans.

The obvious choice is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). I must tell you that young Goethe had a terrible time in school, and ended up receiving an excellent private education AT HOME, by his PARENTS! Take that to heart, you homeschool-prohibitors.

Goethe is one of the greatest literary figures of Germany, and gets ranked with Shakespeare and Dante as one of the three most important poets of all time. Goethe’s most famous work is the poetic drama, Faust.

Excerpt from Faust, Part 1
(Gretchen asks Faust, “Do you believe in God?” Faust cannot answer her in the words she wants, but describes what he feels in his heart)

Der Allumfasser,
    Der Allerhalter,
    Faßt und erhält er nicht
    Dich, mich, sich selbst?
    Wölbt sich der Himmel nicht dadroben?
    Liegt die Erde nicht hierunten fest?
    Und steigen freundlich blickend
    Ewige Sterne nicht herauf?
    Schau ich nicht Aug in Auge dir,
    Und drängt nicht alles
    Nach Haupt und Herzen dir
    Und webt in ewigem Geheimnis
    Unsichtbar-sichtbar neben dir?
    Erfüll davon dein Herz, so groß es ist,
    Und wenn du ganz in dem Gefühle selig bist,
    Nenn es dann, wie du willst:
    Nenns Glück! Herz! Liebe! Gott!

And in English:

The all-embracing one,
    The all-preserving one,
    Does He not embrace and preserve
    You, me, (and) Himself?
    Does the sky not arch above us up there?
    Does the earth not lie firm down here?
    And do not with kind glance
    The eternal stars rise?
    Do I not look at you eye to eye,
    And does not everything press
    Upon your head and heart
    And weave in eternal mystery
    Invisible and visible around you?
    Fill your heart, as big as it is, from that
    And when you are completely blissful in the feeling,
    Then call it what you like:
    Call it happiness! Heart! Love! God!

Goethe

Learned men and women of Germany, do not worship intellectualism or philosophy, but worship God, “the all-embracing one, the all-preserving one,” as your own poet has said.
************
To comment, click on the title above, then go to the bottom of the post and add your comment.

The child is not the mere creature of the state

Posted March 13th, 2007 by Jen in education, politics/world news
6 Comments »

In heartbreaking news on the Busekros case yesterday, the Appeals Court in Germany upheld the decision of the lower court against the Busekros family. So, as it currently stands, Melissa is still held hostage by the German authorities, and her parents, Hubert and Gundrun, are allowed a one hour per week visitation at a government facility. This latest court ruling also demands that the parents undergo psychiatric testing, and there is a very real fear that their remaining five children will be taken away from them.
As I said in an earlier post, homeschooling is illegal in Germany. After this latest round of incredulous events, I thought about the struggle here in the United States with the right to homeschool. Dana at Principled Discovery reminded me that we weren’t in a much different position here 20 years ago, but we had the great benefit of favorable court decisions.

The famous words from Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), would be helpful for the German judges to take to heart: “The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” This landmark case held that the Oregon Compulsory Education Act that required attendance at public schools was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. There have been a string of other courts cases which have solidified the rights of parents to homeschool their children.

An interesting note in the Pierce case is that it was the Ku Klux Klan that was behind the amendment to Oregon’s Compulsory Education Act which would have made it illegal for students to attend private schools. Of course, we know the strong ties during WWI between the KKK and the Nazis. It seems like the same types of people are intent on passing the same types of laws.

The head of the German Youth Welfare Office (Jugendamt) insists that the Busekros case is not about homeschooling. Their psychiatric evaluation of Melissa portrays her as “a highly disturbed girl who obediently and faithfully obeys the idealistic statements of her father and who describes the State as being despostic and ‘fascist-like’.” The biggest problem the Jugendamt appears to have with the Busekros family dynamics is, as they stated, that “Melissa demonstrates loyalty towards her father and unconditional solidarity with her family.”

Aha! So the German State has further indicted itself, and this is even worse than just saying homeschooling is illegal. They have just violated their own Basic Law (Grundgesetz). The Basic Law, by the way, is the constitution of Germany, and came into effect in 1949 after being ratified by all the German states (Lander) – with the exception of Bavaria, where not so coincidentally, the Busekros family resides.

Right off the bat, Article 1 of the Basic Law says “human dignity shall be inviolable.” Skip to the heart of the matter and read Article 4: “Freedom of faith and of conscience, and freedom to profess a religious or philosophical creed, shall be inviolable.” Saying so doesn’t make it so. It’s violable, all right. It says right there that everyone should have the freedom to say that their State is despotic and fascist!

Everything the Busekros lawyers need to back up their case is spelled out in the German constitution. Or they can look at similar wording in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which, I must point out, specifically addresses parental rights in education: Article 26(3) says “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” Prior rights means the parent’s right is prior to the state’s right.

So what in the world is wrong with these German judges?? I have no idea what German case law looks like, or what legal precedents are in their courts. Is this judicial tyranny? Is Germany still too “newborn” to stand up on it’s wobbly legs of democracy? Would their judges show enough wisdom and humility and look at some of our legal rulings? (At least look at them now, before the tide turns over on this side of the world).

“The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”
Justice McReynolds, Pierce v. Society of Sisters.

Condoleezza, what about Germany?

Posted March 7th, 2007 by Jen in education, politics/world news
10 Comments »

The annual Human Rights Report was released by the State Department yesterday. I was curious, in light of the case of the German homeschooler, Melissa Busekros, the 15 year old girl who was forcibly removed from her home last month by a SWAT team of German police for the “crime” of being homeschooled, what the report would have to say about the condition of human rights in Germany.
The country report for Germany only contained the following statement with regard to homeschooling: “The legal obligation that children attend a school, confirmed by the Constitutional Court in May and the European Court of Justice in October, and the related bar on homeschooling, was a problem for some groups. Generally, state authorities have permitted such groups to establish charter‑type schools.”

“A problem for some groups” is truly an understatement of the horrific human rights violations occurring in Germany. Because of a 1938 law prohibiting homeschooling, German families who have a need or desire for an alternative education are literally being persecuted. The Busekros case is unfolding in 2007, so I can’t hold the Human Rights Report to task for this oppression, however, 2006 and previous years are rife with examples of egregious violations.

A February, 2006 letter to the U.N. Commission for Human Rights details several violations of German homeschoolers’ civil and human rights, including the following acts enforced against home educating parents by the German state: imprisonment, fines, loss of custody of children, criminal charges, children forced to school by police, and forced admission of children into a psychiatric clinic or foster home. The Busekros case is simply a continuation of a pattern of abuse.

Yes, this is current, I am not pulling stories from 1940s era Germany, as it would seem. The 1938 law enacted by the Hitler regime was an effort to control every aspect of free thought, and we all know the results, unless you’re one of the “Holocaust-never-happened” people.

And how is the modern German state justifying its position that compulsory education can not include home education? A few quotes I came across shed some light. Here’s an excerpt from a letter from the Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany, in response to inquiries on the Melissa Busekros case: “The public has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole.” That doesn’t sound a whole lot different than old Germany, and I can think of an entire parallel culture that was nearly wiped out by that philosophy.

Another telling quote, from a 2005 case involving seven homeschool families in Northwest Germany, is even more insidious. Heinz Kohler, the county education director, said that “the parents’ rights to personally educate their children would prevent the children from growing up to be responsible individuals within society…” Clearly, something is going on here, because studies of homeschoolers show higher test scores, greater community involvement, and very well-rounded individuals. What Kohler and the German state meant to say is that the children will grow up to be free-thinking (horrors) responsible individuals within society.

I can understand compulsory education in that the state has a legitimate interest in an educated public, but there are many, many ways to educate, and many individual circumstances that call for an alternative education. For crying out loud, an eight year old disabled boy was forced, against his parents’ wishes, and with the threat of removal of custody, to attend the school the German officials demanded he attend (the Gerber case).

So, there are strange things going on in Germany. Prostitution is legal and widespread, while homeschooling is illegal and families are fleeing the country. And a precious young girl is still held hostage away from her family. Please visit the International Human Rights Group website for a list of high ranking German officials to contact to voice your protest and demand in the name of human rights that Melissa be released back into the custody of her parents.

As for Condoleezza Rice and the State Department, I’d ask that they take a closer look at Germany.

*******